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Te Araroa activists win awards
John Smith
John Smith and his Te Ara O Te Puhinui group has won the Auckland Regional Authority's Neighbourhood Improvement Award for 2005. The project is part of Te Araroa.
And Te Araroa's Manawatu Trust won praise for a visual presentation of track development, taking second place in Palmerston North's Green Screen Awards. The Manawatu Arts Recycling centre won first place.
Manawatu hikers test the rough-cut route to Mangahou
The Auckland Regional Authority's Environment Management chair, Dianne Glenn said Smith and his group had done a huge amount of work on the proposed 12-kilometre walkway alongside Manukau City's Puhinui Stream. Smith had designed, and his team had helped build, two pedestrian bridges and Smith had helped save an historic railway overbridge, resiting it for use as a stream crossing. As well, the group had planted thousands of lowland forest seedings along the trail corridor, and had cleared years of heavy rubbish.
Palmerston North City Environmental Trust hands out its Green Screen awards once a year to groups who've improved the city's environmental potential. The judges of this year's award praised the 8-minute video by Te Araroa Manawatu Trust. It showed the first walk-through of a newly-cut route from Gordon Kear Forest, south of the city, alongside the Tokomaru River to Mangahou. Judges said it had a clear narrative and showed excellent images of trail development.
Manawatu Trust's John Todd said: "We didn't set out to do an environmental film, but the result was very satisfying and gives us a very good film from which we're able to promote the trail locally."
The film is now retained in the Palmerston North City Library Archives. The new trail will open to the public in the summer of 2005-6.
The Puhinui Stream route through Manukau City requires some private land purchase, and will not be open for at least 18 months.
