Conservation projects in Kaimai Mamaku are connecting people to the land – and to each other.

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The kōkako is Raponi Te Rangikātukua Wilson’s favourite. He got to hold one during a translocation project, and hearing them sing in the ngahere brings him joy. One day he’d love his kids to wake up to the rich melodies of kōkako ringing out across the bush.

It’s a vision Wilson is actively creating as part of an iwi-led restoration project, Te Wao Nui o Tapuika. The project is delivering pest control across a swathe of land that will connect up two existing kōkako safe zones. A team of “young trappers and hunters extraordinaire” are about to start their big baiting operation – but the project is already a success story.

“It was always about, holistically, how do we empower Tapuika and bring them back to the responsibility that has been handed down to us as kaitiaki of the land?” Wilson says. While a handful of kaimahi are out in the bush, their stories and photos are filtering back to the wider iwi. “The team and their enthusiasm and passion has connected our people with that place again.” A place Tapuika have been living for 800 years.

The team are deploying traditional monitoring, which Wilson describes as centred on “keen observation”. “One of the things our people understood, intrinsically, is that our value is not knowing what’s good for the environment, but knowing how to speak to the environment, so that it can tell us what’s good for it,” he explains. The project is also “reinventing” the iwi’s mātauranga – much of which had been lost – based on the recollections of elders.

‘A melting pot of conservation effort’

Te Wao Nui o Tapuika is one of 12 projects funded by Jobs for Nature under the umbrella of the Manaaki Kaimai Mamaku Trust. It’s also part of the Kaimai-Mamaku Restoration Project, an “incredible melting pot of conservation effort” across more than 300,000 hectares. “If you look at all the predator-free traps on a map, it looks like a really bad case of the measles,” says Louise Saunders, CEO of the trust.

Saunders has lived alongside the Kaimai Mamaku environment for most of her life, and she says that restoration mahi is something that has deep meaning for a lot of people in the rohe. “So much effort is going into it because people are so jolly concerned about what’s going on. It feels good to take action,” she says. Mobilising folks on the ground will be key as big changes play out across the landscape, she adds. “We’re going to need to be super observant across massive scales because we can’t survive without the forests. We can’t survive without those waterways.”

Future-proofing funding efforts

Jobs for Nature has provided an invaluable foundation to get a new cohort of people trained up to contractor-level proficiency – and co-funding means eight of those 12 projects can continue ticking over.

Now, the trust is looking at what comes next, and tapping into the global shift towards business investment in biodiversity. They’re developing a platform to enable business investment directly in nature conservation projects. “The goal is to have a platform that makes it just as easy for businesses to invest a number of hectares over a number of years in support of project teams going forward,” says Saunders. The trust provides assurance info for investors, so they know the impact on the ground is real.

A positive example of co-governance

The Manaaki Kaimai-Mamaku Trust is proudly co-governed, with both Māori and Pākehā chairs. Wilson and Saunders see the environment as an area where the meeting of te ao Māori and Pākehā worldviews really shines. “Co-governance is actually collaboration, and there’s no better place to deliver collaboration than the environment,” says Saunders.

Wilson recalls a recent wānanga that brought together people from all different projects. “All the workers, the ones that actually see, touch, feel the work, listen to the environment. They came together and there was no difference. The environment is the commonality. That’s the focus, and the contentions and the points of difference don’t exist.”