Sediment & nutrients
Decades of sediment and nutrient entering Lake Waikare have contributed to extremely poor water quality.
Waikare Whangamarino Wetlands Restoration
Restore the Water.
Revive the Wetlands.
Protect Our Future.
Bringing our community together to restore Lake Waikare and Whangamarino Wetland for generations to come.
The problems are complex. The goal is simple. We want our lake and wetlands healthy again.
7,000 ha
of internationally significant wetland at Whangamarino
3,442 ha
of open water at Lake Waikare (Waikato Regional Council)
Ramsar Site
internationally recognised since 1989
One Future
for our children and the generations after them
The heart of our community
Lake Waikare and Whangamarino Wetland are part of the heart of our community.
Together they support wildlife, communities, farming, flood protection, recreation, cultural heritage and one of New Zealand’s most significant freshwater ecosystems.
But generations of change have taken their toll.
WWWR is bringing community, science, landowners, mana whenua, councils and government together behind something bigger than any one of us.
A healthy lake. A thriving wetland. A legacy worth leaving.
What are we working for?
Imagine Waikare and Whangamarino thriving again.
- Water people can safely connect with.
- Wetlands alive with native birds.
- Healthy habitat for tuna, native fish and aquatic life.
- Cleaner waterways.
- Restored native vegetation.
- A landscape that keeps protecting our communities from floods.
- Places to walk, paddle, learn and visit.
- A place our children can explore, learn from and be proud of.
That is what restoration looks like.
Whangamarino contains a diverse mosaic of bogs, fens, swamps, rivers and open water, and provides habitat for numerous native plants, fish and birds — including threatened species.
The challenge
How did we get here?
No single decision or group created this. Change accumulated across a whole catchment over generations.
Koi carp
Pest fish disturb lake sediments, damage aquatic habitat and make recovery considerably harder.
Altered water flows
Flood control and drainage infrastructure changed the natural movement of water through Lake Waikare and Whangamarino.
Loss of habitat
Drainage, land-use change, invasive plants and introduced animals have altered sensitive wetland ecosystems.
A changing catchment
Urban growth, farming, infrastructure and communities all rely on the catchment. Restoration therefore requires solutions that work across the whole system.
Waikato Regional Council identifies sediment entering from land and waterways, together with wind, waves and koi carp, as contributors to Lake Waikare’s suspended sediment problem. The Department of Conservation identifies drainage, waterway modification and introduced species among the pressures on Whangamarino, and its 2026 assessment reports a decline in ecological condition alongside a call for collaborative restoration.
Understand the challenge
There isn’t one cause — and there won’t be one solution.
The Action Plan
19 actions. One shared goal.
Turning decades of research into action. Over many years, hundreds of potential interventions have been investigated. The Waikare Whangamarino Action Plan brings that work together and focuses attention on the actions capable of creating meaningful change.
Level one
Good management practice
Do the things we already know work.
Protect waterways, reduce erosion and sediment, restore riparian areas, improve land management, protect existing wetlands and manage contaminants.
Level two
Stretch actions
Do more, faster and at greater scale.
Projects requiring greater investment, coordination, engineering or technology than business as usual allows.
Level three
Transformative actions
Tackle the big problems incremental change alone cannot solve.
Koi carp control and localised eradication, legacy water and sediment quality, redesigning water-level controls for ecological outcomes, and restoring highly erodible land alongside landowners.
Koi carp
Koi Carp: One of Our Biggest Challenges
Koi carp are one of the most visible symptoms of the ecological pressure facing Lake Waikare. As they feed, carp disturb bottom sediments, contributing to turbid water and making it harder for aquatic vegetation to re-establish.
Removing them from an open, connected waterway is extremely difficult.
Difficult does not mean impossible — and it does not mean we do nothing.
Water movement
Why can’t we simply flush the lake?
It sounds simple. It isn’t. Lake Waikare historically interacted differently with the surrounding river system, and today’s flood-protection infrastructure has fundamentally changed those flows.
Whangamarino
This isn’t just a local swamp.
It’s a wetland of international importance.
Whangamarino is almost 7,000 hectares of swamps, fens, peat bogs, rivers and open water — the second-largest freshwater wetland in the North Island, recognised internationally under the Ramsar Convention since 1989.
And it does something else incredibly important: it helps protect us. Whangamarino forms part of the Lower Waikato flood-control system.
Community
This belongs to all of us.
Restoration will not happen through one council, government agency, farmer, iwi organisation or community group acting alone. It requires all of us — and generations of people willing to keep going.
- Mana whenua
- Farmers
- Landowners
- Residents
- Schools
- Businesses
- Scientists
- Conservation groups
- Councils
- Central government
WWWR exists to help create that collective voice.
We inherited the problem. We can leave the solution.
Our position
A shared challenge, not a fight between neighbours.
We don’t believe restoration requires choosing between our environment and our community. We believe the challenge is finding solutions that protect both.
Farmers are part of the solution.
Mana whenua are part of the solution.
Our towns are part of the solution.
Government is part of the solution.
We are all part of the solution.
Help restore Waikare & Whangamarino
Big problems need big solutions — and thousands of small actions. Join the movement, come to an event, or back a project.