Located on the south-eastern shores of the Manukau Harbour, under authority of the Papakura District Council. The suburb makes up the southernmost part of the Auckland metropolitan area.
The Papakura Inlet Protection Society (PIPS) has been working since 1995 on a plan to control the spread of mangroves in their estuary, Pahurehure Inlet 2. The inlet was choked off from the Manukau Harbour by construction of the Southern Motorway in 1964. Pahurehure Inlet 2 is typical of many northern North Island estuaries where natural flushing has been dramatically reduced by causeway construction. Historical Pahurehure Inlet 2 photographs show a sandy shoreline along what was an upper arm of the Manukau Harbour. Construction of the Southern Motorway replaced the 500 metre-wide entrance to Pahurehure Inlet 2 with a 12m2 cross-sectional flow area concrete culvert. This catastrophic reduction in flow area resulted in the estuary becoming a sink for fine sediment.
Forty-six years later, approximately one metre of mud has buried the environment that long-term locals once knew. What had been a mangrove free estuary soon became ideal mangrove habitat. By 1995, locals realised that if nothing was done to control the spread of this species, the entire Pahurehure Inlet 2 would become a forest of mangroves similar to Pahurehure Inlet 1 which has become just that after also being choked off by the Southern Motorway construction.
The Auckland Regional Council finally approved the removal of the mangroves in February 2010. Over two days, a helicopter and arborists cleared a hectare of mangroves from the inlet.
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