Projects

Funding from the Government’s Freshwater Improvement Fund (FIF), one of 34 projects nationally to improve freshwater management and the only project funded in the Otago region. The FIF fund focuses on water bodies in vulnerable catchments that are showing signs of stress, but which have not yet reached a tipping point.

UCLT is keen to connect with people living locally with a background or particular interest in freshwater management and willing to get involved with the Wanaka Water Project.  Contact community@uppercluthalakestrust.org to find out more.

Facilitate freshwater research by the University of Otago and researchers from NZ and overseas. The research centre will include offices, educational rooms and laboratories for visiting researchers. The project is the brainchild of the late Dr Maggie Lawton and Dr Marc Schallenberg

Monitoring buoys would aid in understanding nutrient dynamics in our lakes and offer a long term stream of scientific measurement data to assist scientists to develop an understanding of how these lakes function, and particular conditions that may encourage the development of Lake Snow. The Trust believes that having earlier access to monitoring information will improve the design and assessment of management decisions for the lakes and catchments and better inform the Trust’s Integrated Catchments Management Plan.

Investigation of the development of Lake Snow in association with the Centre for Space Science Technology, the new Space research facility being developed in Alexandra. Using historical satellite images, it is anticipated that the development of the Lake Snow incursion will be able to be mapped and understood. Spectral readings from the images should facilitate an understanding of the relative densities of the incursion over the entire lake, including the identification of “hot spots”.

In 2012 retired zoologist John Darby and volunteers made floating wooden platforms to create artificial nest sites for the Grebes around Wanaka marina. The project has so far resulted in 70 breeding attempts and 153 chicks being fledged from the marina. Crested grebes are extinct in the North Island and are endangered in the South Island due to predation by stoats and ferrets, loss of shoreline nesting habitat and disturbance by power boats. John Darby is a Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand (CRSNZ).