Twisting and turning across the Canterbury plains, braided rivers are rare, ever-changing and highly dynamic.
Duncan Grey, senior water ecology scientist for Environment Canterbury, said that’s what makes them fascinating.
“While we might be stood here in the dry bare gravel today you come back next year this could be overgrown with various plants or we could be under water!”
But now they're under threat with the Ashley-Rakahuri River left with no room to expand.
“We need to rethink our management a bit,” Nick Ledgard of the Ashley Rakahuri Rivercar group said.
“But by in large we're lucky to have what we have.”
Gravel extraction is part of Environment Canterbury's plan to help.
“It's all a question of degree, doing it to a level that we can retain greater river habitat but still supply shingle,” Ledgard added.
Nesting in the rocks are some of our most threatened birds like the banded dotterel.
The river’s birds require bare gravel to nest on but weeds are now out of control and it takes a one-in-10 year flood to clear the weeds completely.
“We're seeing a whole suite of weeds here now that we weren’t seeing 10 years ago,” Ledgard said.
They make the perfect hiding spots for predators, Grey added.
“Rats, stokes, ferrets, hedgehogs make a meal of those fledging birds and the eggs.”
Environment Canterbury said increased weed control and trapping will be part of their renewed focus therefore as well.
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