Source: Environment Canterbury Regional Council
Our work includes supporting the Youth Rōpū, working in partnership to support Enviroschools across Waitaha, and providing educational support and resources to schools. Our staff supported young people to attend a youth summit on the Greater Christchurch Partnership Huihui Mai engagement and fed into public transport planning. Additional Enviroschools have also been welcomed to the programme, which continues to grow.
A paper was presented to Council’s Regional Leadership, Climate and Community Resilience Committee meeting in March and the committee resolved that two youth members would join the committee with full voting rights. These young people, Oscar Bloom and Alice Docking, were welcomed to the Committee in May.
Youth members Oscar Bloom (left), Alice Docking (right) with Deputy Chair Craig Pauling.
Reinstatement of nassella tussock monitoring programme
Our pest monitoring programme has been progressing well this quarter, with a particular focus on collecting data on plant species (spatial, numbers, and densities) when inspecting sites and re-instating the nassella tussock population trend monitoring programme after a year’s hiatus.
We are continuing to assess identified high-risk invasive organisms and this quarter we have made good progress with our pest plant sale surveillance programme. We have now doubled (to approximately 350) the number of sales outlets that we are monitoring. We have also expanded the programme to monitor fetes, fairs, and roadside stalls.
Nassella tussock is an invasive grass that is spreading in Waitaha.
The Check, Clean, Dry surveillance programme we developed and implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Primary Industries was completed at the end of January. This was a very successful programme and this year we had two advocates working with the community through the summer months. We have attended A&P shows across the region and produced stakeholder notices, ‘biobites‘, and mailouts.
Public transport
While the driver shortage has impacted our services over the past year, the situation has continued to improve in recent months with newly recruited drivers becoming active on our network. Missed trips were 5.3% in March, a reduction from a high of 8.2% in October/November. Patronage continues to trend positively, despite these missed trips. March patronage reached 95% of pre-COVID levels.
We’re proud to say that Metro’s bus fleet is now 20% zero-emissions with the addition of 16 electric vehicles joining the fleet in December. Further purchases are to come for routes 17 and 28.
One of Metro’s zero-emissions buses.
For more information and updates on the key areas of our work, check out our Reporting Back hub.
Environment Canterbury © 2023
Retrieved: 2:06pm, Thu 25 May 2023
https://www.ecan.govt.nz/get-involved/news-and-events/2023/how-are-we-tracking/
