Shelly Beach

The Operative Regional Plan: Coastal notes that the vicinity of Shelly Beach including "Jordan’s Farm on the eastern shore, Oyster Point and Shelly Beach Island is an area of intertidal banks and shellbanks forming a complex habitat for a variety of animal and plant communities. The rich intertidal banks (Coastal Management Area 6a) are a feeding ground for thousands of international migratory and New Zealand endemic wading birds including a number of threatened species. The associated island (CMA 6c) and nearby pasture on Jordan’s Farm and Oyster Point collectively provide the numerically most important high tide roost on the Kaipara for these birds and a variety of other coastal bird species. Shelly Beach Island is a key area in the Kaipara Harbour for marine bird species. In recent years it has become a major nesting site for Caspian tern, a threatened coastal bird, with around 500 birds nesting on the island. In the shelter of the shellbanks at Shelly Beach Island and Oyster Point (CMA 6c, 6d) and in the mouth of the Makurau River (6b) grow important areas of mangroves and saltmarsh. The vegetation grades from the mangroves and saltmarsh into coastal shrublands above Mean High Water Springs at Shelly Beach Island and Oyster Point (CMA 6c, 6d) and into mature kanuka forest with emergent tanekaha and kauri at the Makurau River (CMA 6b). The saline vegetation provides high quality habitat for threatened secretive coastal fringe birds. The Department of Conservation has selected this area, with the addition of an area of intertidal bank to the north, as an Area of Significant Conservation Value (ASCV)."