Greening Waipara: a ‘grape roots’ project to include biodiversity in the wine experience

Abstract

It is no secret that New Zealand’s developed landscapes have lost most of their biodiversity - indigenous plants, habitats and wildlife. Biodiversity is a defining element in a district’s sense of place and there seems to be a growing sense of this in the Waipara wine-growing area of North Canterbury. This is a land of rich, sometimes boney soils and dry summers, but it includes microclimates that avoid the worst of the drought and frost. Land use has been transformed from hunting and gathering by the Tangata Whenua as well as their cultivation of kumara and other crops, to extensive and intensive sheep grazing and mixed farming and then to forestry or horticulture - including viticulture.