Identifying a wetland

If you think you have a wetland on your land, that’s great news for the environment and your community! Wetlands of every shape and size are beneficial to our environment and communities. They help to maintain water quality, reduce the impacts of flooding and drought, and some can lock up carbon to protect us from climate change.

Wetlands provide important habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals, and are of significant cultural importance for Māori.

Some work may need to be done to help protect your wetland. However, you might qualify for funding and support from the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) to carry out fencing, restoration planting or pest control. 

Restoring and protecting natural wetlands can cost money, but there is support available if you meet the criteria.

The GW Healthy Waterways Programme offers financial aid to landowners for fencing to exclude stock, pest control, and planting, and information and advice to support anyone restoring waterways and wetlands.

For more information and to confirm whether you meet the criteria for funding and support visit the Healthy Waterways section of our website or email wetlands@gw.govt.nz.

Depending on your circumstances, GWRC can provide services such as:

• A GW ecologist (or recommended external specialist) can undertake the national wetland identification protocols (the Clarkson Method) for identifying a wetland and defining its boundaries.
• A GW trained employee (or recommended external specialist) can complete a pasture assessment which determines whether the wetland is dominated by pasture species, and therefore whether the wetland rules and regulations apply.
• A GW biodiversity expert can work with you to prepare a wetland restoration management plan.

Wetlands and their boundaries can be identified using the national Wetland Delineation Protocols (also known as “the Clarkson Method”)  

This method uses 2m x 2m vegetation quadrants to measure the abundance of plant species which are adapted to wet conditions.

GW can provide advice on wetland delineation but we do not provide a list of recommended ecologists.

GW uses a pasture assessment methodology to determine whether a wetland meets the 50% pasture exception.  As for the Clarkson method, 2m x 2m vegetation plots are used to assess the proportion of pasture species in the wetland area.

This pasture assessment needs to be completed by an expert. To have a pasture assessment completed, please contact wetlands@gw.govt.nz.

Some wetlands are obvious and easy to identify. Others can be very tricky, and require a certain level of specialist knowledge and experience, especially in establishing the boundary of a natural wetland.  Examples of where a pasture assessment might be required are in paddocks that have patches of rushes, or in paddocks that become very wet over winter.

The pasture assessment needs to be completed by an expert. Attempting to complete this assessment without appropriate training could lead to an incorrect result (e.g. incorrectly identifying an area as wet pasture rather than a natural wetland). This poses a risk to a landowner who might carry out activities within this wetland area that are not permitted by national or regional regulations or rules.  

The regulations and rules that set out what can and can’t be done in a wetland apply to ‘natural wetlands’, rather than all wetlands.  A ‘natural wetland’ is a wetland (as defined in the RMA) that is not:

a) A wetland constructed by artificial means unless it was constructed to offset impacts on, or restore, an existing or former natural wetland.

b) A geothermal wetland

c) Any area of improved pasture that, as of 3 September 2020, is dominated by (more than 50% of) exotic pasture species and is subject to temporary rain-derived water pooling.

Although the rules and regulations that manage what can or can’t be done in a natural wetland don’t state a minimum size, wetlands that are smaller than 3 metres in diameter will not be identified as natural wetland by the Clarkson identification methodology.

Practically, there has to be a minimum size, otherwise an area with a single wetland plant would qualify as a wetland.

The 3m diameter was selected to accommodate the 2m x 2m plots (i.e. 2.8m across the diagonal) used in the Clarkson Method. This means that natural wetlands have to be at least 7m² to be affected by rules and regulations.

The PNRP lists those natural wetlands that are larger than 0.1 ha that had been identified at the time that this plan was notified in 2015.

The location of these Schedule F3 wetlands is shown on the PNRP GIS maps.

Schedule F3 lists identified significant natural wetlands for the purpose of managing livestock exclusion under PNRP Rule R97.

National regulations

• The Resource Management Act (RMA) - Is national legislation that promotes the sustainable management of natural and physical resources such as land, air and water.
• the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 (NPS-FM) provides local authorities with direction on how to manage freshwater under the Resource Management Act 1991.
• The National Environmental Standards for Freshwater 2020 (NES-FW) set out a range of regulations that restrict certain activities within and adjacent to a natural wetland.
• The National Stock Exclusion Regulations 2020 sets out rules that manage stock access to natural wetlands, as well as other waterbodies.

Regional Regulations

• The Regional Policy Statement for the Wellington Region (RPS) sets out the framework and priorities for resource management in the Wellington Region.
• The Proposed Natural Resources Regional Plan has a set of detailed objectives, policies, rules and other methods that govern wetland management in the Wellington Region.