Landowner environmental attitudes in the re-making of ‘riparian’ places

Programmes for riparian restoration have flourished in the last decade as a means for both improving water quality and (re-)establishing ‘natural’ waterways. In New Zealand there has been a shift from traditional planting of exotics for prevention of river bank erosion, to planting native vegetation. This represents recognition of the loss of indigenous biodiversity and affirmation of indigenous rights of Maori. The process involves identifying priority streams or wetlands for restoration work, developing a site plan, permanently excluding grazing livestock from the area, planting (often using voluntary community labour) the area with natives in accord with the site plan, and maintenance until such time as the new vegetation has become self-sustaining. The new frontier for such riparian ‘restoration’ in New Zealand is the legacy network of artificial drains that remove water from farm land. The focus of our research is on the Sustainable Drain Management programme in the Lake Ellesmere catchment. The element of the programme explored here is the free provision of technical advice in the form of site planting plans to 20 local land owners. The results of a survey that incorporated a set of New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) questions and was completed by 18 of the landowners are reported here together with their responses to semi-structured open-ended questions about the technical advice and the restoration activity as we attempt to unravel the role of attitudes in re-making riparian places