Real world experience. Not just advice, we also get our hands dirty controlling pest plants, pest animals and planting native trees.

Recent ecology projects

  • Low Incidence Pest Plant contractor auditing

    Ecological Auditing

    Who: Auckland Council - Buffers Programme | Regional Parks | Local Parks | Low Incidence | Project Twin Streams | Waitakere Ranges Road Corridors
    Where: Whole Auckland Region
    Duration: 9 Years

    The Client’s Challenge: Our various clients at Auckland Council have engaged physical works contractors to remove pest plants on public and private land across the Auckland region. They need to be assured they are getting value for money from those contractors.

    Our service: Our experienced team take random samples from work sites and assesses the appropriateness of methodologies used on the ground and the effectiveness of the control against specifications prescribed to the contractor. Our Independent, third-party observations, provide Auckland Council with the unbiased measures necessary to improve contractor performance and ensure the ratepayer’s money is spent effectively.

  • View from a rocky trail overlooking a large turquoise lake surrounded by green hills and mountains, with a beach along the shoreline and a cloudy sky.

    Ecological Management Plan

    Who: Waimarino Queenstown Ltd (via Tend Trees)
    Where: Queenstown
    Duration: 1 month

    The Client’s Challenge: Waimarino Queenstown Ltd received consent via the environment court to develop residential lots on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. A complicated and detailed set of conditions relating to ecological protection were issued.

    Our Service: Makomako produced an Ecological Management Plan which guides development works within and around native vegetation to ensure its protection. This required a careful breakdown of the consent conditions to ensure all requirements were met.

    This project was a joint effort with https://www.tendtrees.co.nz/ our trusted arboriculture experts.

  • Community Restoration Planting Day

    Volunteer Restoration Support

    Who: Auckland Council
    Where: Whole Auckland Region
    Duration: 3 years, ongoing

    The Client’s Challenge: Each year Auckland Council are approached by volunteers and school groups wanting to restore areas on parks by planting native revegetation species. They have numerous sites where preparation of the sites was needed.

    Our Service: We work with Community Rangers and volunteers to determine the best methodologies for each site, including plant selection.

    We mobilised a team to prepare the sites and ensure the volunteer planting will be successful. We also help facilitate planting on the day, setting out plants, providing planting instructions and assisting in the day running smoothly

  • Alex surveying control work of the pest plant Wild Ginger in dense, green forested area with fallen branches and thick foliage.

    Pest Plant Control

    Who: Private Landowners
    Where: North Auckland
    Duration: 3 years, ongoing

    The Client’s Challenge: A number of private landowners who have large rural holdings with bush blocks (including QEII covenants) on them are conservation minded and want to protect the native bush blocks but are often physically unable

    Our Service: We have done the hard yards and systematically grid searched through the bush blocks controlling all pest plants.

    We use the appropriate agrichemicals and tools to control the weeds without any damage to the existing native species.

  • Dense rainforest with green ferns, tall trees, and lush vegetation.

    State of the asset programme

    Who: Auckland Council Ecology Team
    Where: Auckland Region

    The Clients Challenge: Auckland Council’s Ecological Specialists have let a new pest plant control contract with an innovative specification. The specification centres around giving each site a current ecological health classification. To enable smooth running of the contract and create a baseline for performance management each site needed an SOA classification.

    Our Service: We have created a bespoke survey form and worked through a long list of sites providing our client with an SOA level and the accompanying evidence for each site.

    Wherever possible we tied these surveys into an audit to give the client the best value for their money.

  • Auditing report showing results for a conservation area, including photos of flagged trees and lines, with check marks for pass and red for fail, and a safety section with green, gray, and red indicators.

    Animal Pest Auditing & Control

    Who: Auckland Council
    Where: Waiheke Island
    Duration: 6 months

    The Client’s Challenge: Auckland Council are supporting a strong contingent of volunteers on Waiheke Island to eradicate rats. They needed help supporting the volunteers to ensure the numerous bait station lines were going to be effective.

    Our Service: Makomako created a bespoke audit tool to check a wide range of factors such as bait station location, anchoring and signage. We feed this information back so that adjustments can be made to the maintenance regime.

    During the pulse, we also maintained monitoring and bait stations.

  • Spreadsheet showing various data entries related to flora in different sectors, including details like sector, data source, fiscal year, visit number, month and year, park, block name, species, specifications, control outcome, and abundance report info.

    Data Analysis

    Who: Auckland Council - Regional Parks
    Where: Whole Auckland Region
    Duration: 3 years, ongoing

    The Client’s Challenge: Auckland Council Regional Parks team engage multiple contractors each summer season to control pest plants. They have a detailed programme of pest plant control and wealth of historical data. Internally they have embarked on a programme to upload this data into their GIS system (Ruru). The data however was in a multitude of different formats and incomplete.

    Our impact: We have had a team of 2 people multi year cleaning, fixing and organising the plant pest control data from so that it can be successfully loaded into ArcGIS.

  • Close-up of a purple and yellow flower hanging from a branch against a blurred leafy green background with blue sky.

    Low Incidence Pest Plant Surveys

    Who: Auckland Council
    Where: Whole Auckland Region
    Duration: 3 years, ongoing

    The Client’s Challenge: Auckland Council has been controlling Low Incidence Pest Plants for many years. Even after successful control works historic sites must be revisited for 10 years to check for any reoccurrence.

    Our Impact: We grid search a site covering every square meter search for Auckland’s worst weeds. Any specimens found are GPS logged and reported.

  • A person in an orange vest and helmet walking a trail through lush green hillside on a foggy day with a winding dirt path in the background.

    Native vs Exotic vegetation Composition Survey

    Who: Auckland Council
    Where: Waitakere Ranges
    Duration: 1 month

    The Client’s Challenge: Auckland Council required native revegetation of a large XX ha site as a condition of land use by a commercial operator. To release the contract bond Council Officers needed to be sure that coverage of native species met the minimum requirement.

    Our Impact: We designed a XX survey specific to the nature of the site which would provide XX % confidence XX site. This involved running a number of very long transects and recording XX