Long before habitat restoration became a buzzword in the dairy sector, Wynn and Tracy Brown set about restoring the environment on their Matamata farm.
Inside Dairy
4 min read
Creating open-water wetland environments on Tiroroa Farms not only traps sediment but also provides habitat for fish and bird life.
A lifelong love for nature has turned Wynn and Tracy Brown’s Matamata dairy farm into a canvas for sharing their passion while also creating a sustainable, profitable, and resilient dairy business.
Tracy credits her Far North whakapapa and upbringing for her connection to water, and Wynn says he has always been interested in native trees and the bush.
The Browns held a DairyNZ Progressing Dairy Event on their farm in March, where they outlined their 30-year journey and their work to protect and restore the environment while maintaining a profitable farm.
The farm was originally an 180-hectare sheep and beef farm that was converted to dairy in the 1990s and has since expanded from 320 to just under 700 cows.
Today, Tiroroa Farms is 220ha effective and includes 100ha that is used to graze heifers. It is managed by Ella Wharmby, who is assisted by two other staff.
“Our main focus here is pasture utilisation. It’s not a high-producing farm, but a very cost-effective farm because we can still produce a kilogram of milksolids for under $4,” Wynn says.
The farm is at the top of the Mangapapa Catchment, which flows to the Waitoa River, then the Piako River and from there into the Hauraki Gulf. There are about 110 landowners within the Mangapapa catchment.
We didn’t really know much at all, we just had a passion, and we wanted to make the farm workable, we wanted to protect some of those sensitive areas.
Wynn says in hindsight, they made good decisions during the conversion around fencing and raceway locations. A lot of unsuitable land was fenced off, allowing the good land to be farmed better.
“We did a lot of that early on, before the Water Accord and Clean Streams. We were seen as outliers or greenies at that stage of our journey.
“We could see what was coming, but it also made sense in our country – we would be losing stock, and soil from steep sidlings would end up in waterways. It wasn’t just about the environment; it just made good business sense.”
It was a big learning curve for them, especially early on, with little knowledge and resources available.
“We didn’t really know much at all, we just had a passion, and we wanted to make the farm workable, we wanted to protect some of those sensitive areas.”
But they also knew the importance of protecting water, Tracy adds.
“It was driven by values, and the whole thing has been an absolute journey.”
It was around 2010, after the whole ‘dirty dairying’ issue, that they got involved in the wider dairy sector, sharing some of the good work farmers had been doing and motivating other farmers.
They won the Ballance Farm Environment Awards for Waikato, then Tracy became the regional coordinator.
They were involved in the early days of the Dairy Environment Leaders (DEL) network, which Tracy chaired for 10 years. Tracy also now chairs the DairyNZ board.
At a Progressing Dairy Event in March, Wynn and Tracy Brown share their 30-year journey of restoring native habitat while running a profitable dairy farm.
“Farmers were mobilised across New Zealand through DEL to make on-farm change, and it was an absolute pleasure to be involved in that,” she says.
The March event included a stop at some of the Browns’ wetlands and waterways, so farmers could see the work the couple had done over the years.
An eDNA test conducted last year detected banded kōkopu and short-finned eel in a small spring-fed stream flowing from a remnant kahikatea bush stand. The test involves taking a water sample from the farm’s waterway and analysing it for evidence of species interacting with that water. At the event, some of these fish were caught by Waikato Regional Council staff for people to see.
Josh Smith from Waikato Regional Council says it was “really cool” to see the fish in the Browns’ waterway.
“Banded kōkopu are reasonably common coastally, but here inland they’re quite rare,” he says.
The banded kōkopu is a migratory species (it's actually one of five “whitebait” species), which means part of its life cycle involves moving between freshwater and saltwater environments.
DairyNZ principal scientist Dr Craig Depree says fish populations in a waterway are a great indicator of stream health. Streams flowing through farmed catchments act as both highways and homes for these animals.
In the waterways, banded kōkopu, like this one, show the importance of protecting and restoring remnant bush habitat areas on-farm
Riparian planting is one of the most effective actions farmers can take to improve stream health because it re-establishes shade along streams. Shade reduces sediment, cools stream water, increases oxygen and prevents weed growth.
“Even narrow strips planted along pastoral streams can reinstate many of the native benefits that native forest streams have, which were lost as a result of catchment development,” says Craig.
He says it is small streams – with many only a metre wide – that are really important as habitats for native fish. These waterways make up three-quarters of streams nationwide.
“As well as being most of the habitat for fish, they also carry a disproportionately large amount of the contaminants because they see a lot of land use.”
“We have to reduce contaminants, but the problem is that contaminants get used as a proxy measure for stream health.
“While we must keep tabs on those contaminants and ensure the way we are farming is minimising the loss of contaminants to waterways, we are not going to get to where we need in terms of healthy streams with abundant life if we just pull nutrient contaminant levers.
“We need to be thinking about those things that are really limiting [stream health], and we know that one of the greatest pressures on pastoral streams relates to the removal of streamside (riparian) vegetation.”
He also pointed out that the science supporting the benefits of stream shading is much more robust than the science supporting contaminant-based limit-setting.
A drone is used on the Browns’ farm to remove invasive pussy willow, a safer and more efficient method for managing unwanted species.
While planting natives is rewarding, there is an ongoing battle to control invasive pest plants on the farm. The Browns use a drone operator to spray pussy willow along the wetland gully areas, as demonstrated at the field day. In the past, Wynn would have had to remove those trees manually with a chainsaw or with spray, which was time-consuming and dangerous.
They began a pest programme 10 to 15 years after planting the trees, when they noticed fewer birds around. That programme includes automated traps for rodents and other pest species, as well as bait stations throughout the farm, and Wynn also regularly shoots feral cats.
“The planting is only a small part of the work and the budget in a lot of ways,” Tracy says.
They did most of the planting in the days before funding was established to help farmers, and so progressed this in achievable ‘bite-sized’ chunks over the years.
DairyNZ area manager Stephanie Gudgeon says the work the Browns have done and the example they have set is inspirational.
“You are role models for farmers in the area, and to see this restorative journey and your values of belonging and protecting the land is inspiring. “Behind it all is a business that supports people, animals and profitability.”
Find practical ways to improve water quality with DairyNZ’s resources at dairynz.co.nz/waterways
Talk to your local area manager for advice tailored to your farm and get involved with Progressing Dairy events or your catchment group to see what’s working for others in your region.
This article was originally published in Inside Dairy May-July 2026.
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