How to help us protect inanga this season

The Team from Department of Conservation

Inanga are a New Zealand native aquatic species that is at risk and in decline. Every year there are fewer inanga in our streams and rivers. There are ways that you can help prevent losing them from our waterways.

Inanga prefer to live in bush-covered streams and rivers and in the last 100 years they have lost of huge amount of their habitat by people draining wetlands, artificially channelling small streams and removing vegetation beside streams.

Adult inanga need clean and healthy water to live in and breed. Pollution from the land reduces water quality in streams and barriers in waterways like dams also stop the inanga migrating.

Inanga have an unusual life cycle. They begin their life as eggs laid in vegetation beside streams in late summer and early autumn. When they hatch, they are carried downstream as larvae and spend 6 months at sea, in the spring they migrate back upstream as whitebait and then grow into adult fish.

Some easy ways you can help to stop the decline in numbers:
• Always follow the whitebait fishing regulations (Whitebait season starts in August in Hauraki)
• Keep your catch small and take only what you need
• Keep streams free from pest plant and fish
• Get involved and fence and plant your local streams

For more information on identifying and protecting a spawning site or even creating a new site visit www.doc.govt.nz... and search “protecting inanga” in the search bar at the top of the page.

Address: Hauraki Office - 3/366 Ngati Maru Highway PO Box 343, Thames 3540 Find out more