Saturday, May 5 was the first day sports were played at the Tamahere Recreation Reserve with Tamahere School playing a footy game, followed by Waikato Lacrosse running their winter league in the afternoon.

Twenty-four teams from around the Waikato took part in the league, with around 380 players and their many supporters enjoying the new venue, Waikato Lacrosse president Ro Edge said.

“And there would have been between 500-600 people at the reserve during the course of the day.”

The 4.6 hectare Tamahere Reserve, 34 Tauwhare Rd, is a popular spot for locals and visitors to enjoy native bush and wildlife. It is also Tamahere’s top environmental restoration initiative. The reserve represents a rare remnant of Waikato, lowland, kahikatea swamp forest with multiple stands of trees ranging from 50- to 400-years-old. Amid exotic trees

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The Tamahere Reserve, partially restored through thousands of hours of volunteer toil, has become ground zero in a stoush between environmentalists and the Department of Conservation.

At the heart of the increasingly bitter dispute – which has triggered countless meetings and threats of legal action – is the country’s native nocturnal flyer, the long-tailed bat.

For the past eight years, Bill Hodgson and volunteers have been restoring the Tamahere Reserve, on Tauwhare Rd.

The Tamahere Reserve has been closed temporarily.

A number of the pine trees in the Tauwhare Rd reserve have been found to be posing a risk to reserve users.

The Waikato District Council has organised arborists to work on the dangerous trees as soon as possible.

The Tamahere Reserve has featured in a magazine promoting outdoor adventures for kids.

Outdoor Kid is a free bi-monthly magazine and website designed to spread the word about kid-friendly walks throughout New Zealand.

The Tamahere Reserve figures in the June/July magazine and on the website among the top five kid-friendly adventures less than an hour from Hamilton.

A new, 100m stretch of boardwalk has been completed and was officially opened in the Tamahere Reserve today.

Waikato District councillor Jacqui Church, who is also chair of the community trust that provided funds for the boardwalk, cut the ribbon to declare it open.

The new boardwalk section, which brings the entire length of long term board walk in the reserve to around 300m, allows close access to the picturesque Mangaone Stream.

A Cambridge company has been convicted and fined $19,125 for sediment discharges into a Tamahere stream.

The Waikato Regional Council prosecuted Cambridge Excavators Limited (Camex) under the Resource Management Act.

It involved two separate incidents that occurred in November 2016 when a large sediment retention pond used during development of the Tamahere Recreation Reserve was being decommissioned.

Regal Haulage will this week permanently vacate the Tamahere Reserve, closing the truck wash which earned it $1500 in fines from the Waikato Regional Council earlier this year.

The regional council closed down the rubbish-strewn Tauwhare Rd site temporarily in February after local resident Owen Trolove raised concerns it was polluting the Mangaone Stream.

In March, after an investigation the company was found to have breached both its consent and an already issued abatement notice – two infringments each earning a fine of $750.

The restoration of Tamahere nature reserves got a boost today when some Hamilton bank staff swapped their offices for the outdoors.

Six staff from the BNZ Hamilton branch downed office tools and picked up gardening tools to join Tamahere conservationist Leo Koppens in two local reserves – the Tamahere Reserve on Tauwhare Rd, and the Allan Turner Reserve, on Woodcock Rd.

Their big day out was part of Closed for Good, the BNZ’s annual day of volunteering.

Waikato law student Sarah Thomson, who courageously sued the New Zealand government over its climate change targets, will report on the case in Tamahere.

Thomson, along with long time climate action campaigner Jeanette Fitzsimons, will tackle the world’s hottest topic this Sunday, 2pm, in the St Stephen’s Tamahere hall.

Thomson’s case against the New Zealand government, the first of its kind in New Zealand, was heard in June in the Wellington High Court. The judge’s decision has been reserved.