Land Clearing and Mulching, Waikato

Working in Waikato

The Waikato work splits fairly cleanly between production and infrastructure. On farm, it is about turning ground that has quietly gone out of production back into something that can be grazed, and the economics are usually straightforward once someone works out what the retired face is actually costing them. On the infrastructure side it is drains, stopbanks, berms and reserves, where the constraint is nearly always that the batter is too steep to safely put a conventional mower on.

The country here

Rolling dairy country that turns steep quickly at the back of a farm, plus the peat country and the extensive drainage network on the flats. The characteristic Waikato job is the face that has been quietly retired, too steep for the tractor, too big for a hand crew, so it has been left for a decade and is now solid gorse.

What dominates in Waikato

• Gorse, dominant on retired hill faces and gully heads
• Blackberry, through drain margins, creek edges and back fence lines
• Privet, escaped from old shelter plantings into gullies
• Rank kikuyu and pasture growth on banks that cannot be mown conventionally

Councils and compliance

Waikato Regional Council

Waikato Regional Council manages the regional pest plan and a very large drainage, flood protection and stopbank network. Vegetation control on those assets has real access and safety constraints, which is the kind of work our prequalifications and remote machines are set up for.