Thank you for your ongoing support and investment in Te Hōnonga a Iwi. It has been an incredible month! We have shared success with outstanding community initiatives across the motu at The Kūmara Awards, welcomed new business investment, we are working with two new schools to understand their needs and expectations and created 20 new youth leadership roles.
Everyone investing time, resources and know-how into the restoration contributes great value, enabling increased social equity, increased biodiversity and climate mitigation action at pace and scale. Congratulations to each volunteer and all our partners for your successes. Your positive impact matters.
Across April we undertook the following actions and achieved these outcomes:
- We can receive donations now! Please share with your business, friends, and whānau. We do have a wish list of items we are looking to secure finance or in-kind products. Please check out Te Hōnonga a Iwi donations page.
- Following an unexpected drop in the Alexander Stream’s dissolved O2 levels, flagged by Alicia (Youth Leader Water Quality), Amy Sadler Mountains-to-Sea representative, Alicia and Gail Goodwin, teacher at Westminster Christian School, undertook a rigorous assessment of the stream’s health. Given the stream has reasonable waterflow, the team did not expect low dissolved oxygen levels of below three ppm. The group identified contaminated stormwater discharging into Alexander Stream at the start of Rook Place. Watercare and Auckland Council’s pollution hotline were immediately notified. Amy retested the levels of dissolved oxygen, finding levels in our stream were as low as 1.62 ppm, well below the 5ppm threshold for notification. The DO metrics improved upstream. The group plans to retest again shortly. Thank you all for the work you are doing to identify stream health and for reporting concern.
- University and school students often reach out to undertake student-led projects with us. Often they are supported by their teachers or Sustainable Schools professionals. This month, we welcomed four Kristin School senior students who are planting on site and learning about natives. Please contact us on hello@restoringrosedalepark if you need to undertake service hours or have an environmental restoration piece you’d like to achieve. Te Hōnonga a Iwi is a small part of the wider regional ecology network (UWEN) in the Upper Waitemāta. We can connect you in with UWEN if you need somewhere to work within conservation near you or contact Rachael on uwen.manager@gmail.com and we will help you achieve your vision!
- Journalist Sheryl Blythen, BeMedia, has produced four feature news stories this April! She is a machine! Sheryl has also added a wonderful 30-minute NZ documentary “Fools and Dreamers” to our resource list. This documentary is a must see and was one of the original sources of inspiration for Te Hōnonga a Iwi! Treat yourself to half an hour’s endearing Kiwi entertainment. It is a heart-warming story about one person and what he achieved for nature. Imagine what’s possible once we scale to thousands of volunteers! Sheryl, we hope you get to have a weekends rest in May! We really appreciate all you do for us.
- Currently all the mahi is voluntary or supported by Auckland Council/NGO experts and all the manufactured, natural or intellectual capital is gifted/shared by our partners and volunteers, except the original land clearance in 2022 and the materials for the chicken enclosure, which was funded by Auckland Council. Iwi, businesses, schools and community volunteers invest hours of work to ensure the projects’ success. Thank you all for your support and commitment. We couldn’t do it without you.
- We have approached a health care organisation to ask them to consider becoming a sustainable business partner with a new model of sustainable development that involves the organisation contributing one-off payments as their clients register. Clients would be able to choose what area of the restoration they wish to invest the health clinic’s capital. Clients may choose research, seed whakapapa or ensuring our youth managing significant disability are paid the living wage for their restoration mahi. We will update you as we progress.
- Sam Penman at Kaipatiki Project continues to link us with opportunities to partner with schools. We are privileged to receive interest in investing in the restoration from AGE and Wilson Home and look forward to welcoming their people to the site soon.
- We held a youth forum at NHHA to enable youth leaders to connect, hear what each other are achieving and see a presentation on Te Hōnonga a Iwi model to help leaders orientate to the models many moving parts.
- The Communications Team has developed the 3D model further and we hope to complete this piece shortly.
- The Youth Leadership Survey has been developed by Elouise, who is a youth leader for Animal Pest Management and Strategy. Elouise is making amendments to the survey following feedback and will get that out to Youth Leaders and working bee students shortly. We welcome youth feedback and hope to receive guidance from our young people on how we can improve. Thanks so much Elouise for making this important piece happen!
- Monica Sharma, Auckland Council Community Broker Upper Harbour Local Board has linked Te Hōnonga a Iwi with a colleague who is managing increasing governance capacity building. We are hoping to improve our mentoring support for youth wanting to develop governance skills and knowledge. We will update you in due course.
- CEO Business North Harbour Kevin O’Leary welcomed our youth leaders in business activation to his office this month. Kevin took time to talk with our leaders about the pressures and constraints SME’s face in developing their sustainability. He shared excellent ideas to lift business engagement, identified organisations that were likely to be interested in talking about becoming involved in Te Hōno and invited Liam and David to talk with CEOs attending the BNH lunch. We agreed to write an executive summary for the new resource: climate change and risk report, for publication in the BNH magazine. Thank you for your continued support Kevin.
- New partner Mitre 10 Support Centre came to work on the restoration for the day with 12 members of their team donating 60 hours of skilled, energised service. With their great attitudes, hard work ethic and ‘we will do anything’ approach, this fabulous business team rebuilt and repaired the bioreactors, set up the new reactor platform, planted 250 new native seeds, collected inorganic waste and cleared another 50m2 land. The pizzas they had at lunchtime back under cover at Harbour Hockey were well deserved! It was a brilliant day and so much was achieved! There’s more. We received 100 new spades from Mitre 10! So fantastic and welcomed ahead of winter planting. Thank you all! We will be sharing the equipment across the restorations in our rohe.
- Volunteering Auckland have reached out to us, with several local businesses considering investing human capital into the project. We are now a member of Volunteering Auckland and look forward to developing relationships with new SMEs or corporates.
- Nicholas Mayne has continued to support us with developing the seed whakapapa model. We received an extensive supply of fresh locally sourced seeds including Totara, Puriri, Kahikatea, Harakeke, Karamu, Akeake, Carex Disida and cabbage tree seeds. The seeds have been distributed to a new volunteer, Ann Cook, Mayfair Village, who has kindly planted hundreds of seedlings in trays for us. Ann will continue to care for the seeds for the next six months. Welcome to Te Hōnonga a Iwi Ann! The skills and knowledge you have accumulated over your lifetime have huge value - we appreciate your time, expertise and skills. The remaining seeds, along with Nicholas’s mature native seedlings, have been planted by the Kristin Senior Student team.
- Local NGO, Council and independent experts like Nicholas, Briar Broad, Anna Harrison, Sheryl, Sam, Warwick Smith, Matt, Theo, Amy Sadler, Les Wootton, Tony Cunningham, and our pest manager Louis enable the rest of us to learn, ably supported by their expertise and energy to improve environmental and social wellbeing.
- Troy Girdler-Brown, Fulton Hogan has been generous with his time and our request for help from Fulton Hogan to consider clearing and mulching 1 500 m2 in the 2024 restoration section. We will update you with Troy’s guidance on how we might achieve this harder piece!
- Founding partner Hilton Brown Swimming must be celebrated and thanked for their continued support of the project enabling access to the restoration for 2.5 years now. The remaining reactors and the IBC platform on HBS land will be moved across to the 2024/4 site and the remaining land on the border of Hilton Brown Swimming will be planted out to suit their requirements during winter this year. Access to the restoration has been crucial for our success. Hilton Brown have been patient and supportive of the project and offered flex to use their carpark outside their rush hours. We appreciate your investment in the restoration. Thank you.
- We are delighted to be welcoming three new young leaders who will be working to care for our chickens! Welcome Martha and Lucy Wheeler, one year old Aria and parent Navroop Levido and the Hoessler/Colin whanau! Thank you for helping our live-in workforce stay healthy for three months! We still have two positions available for the Chicken Carer role if you would like to talk further, please contact Nicky on hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz
- Les Wootton has set up a trap line towards the Landing and Fernhill area, if you are interested in a pest animal management role for this area, please email hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz
- We have applied for recognition in the Environmental Category of the Sports NZ awards. We will let you know if we hear back from the awards adjudicators.
- Submissions were made by UWEN and specialist advocates on the Fast Track Consenting Bill.
- UWEN have kindly forwarded an opportunity to apply for Sky City Funding that has a big focus on youth-led intergenerational projects. The fund is always open. We will look into this opportunity. We are interested in how we might use AI, technology to support youth to share their leadership journeys in ways that support community cohesion – think the fish doorbell for Te Hōno - please let us know if you have thoughts on this! Growth opportunities within the seed whakapapa model which is led by youth leaders and is intergenerational might be worth considering too. Again, if you have ideas or wish to comment, let us know via email.
- Olivia, Seed Whakapapa Youth Leader, is doing such an outstanding job. She has needed to transplant hundreds of her Manuka seedlings into pots. Bravo! Olivia has worked tirelessly, experimenting with how to grow natives from seed in her back yard. After several trials and tribulations, she has mastered growing Manuka. We are very proud! Thank you! Wonderful results!
- Unfortunately, the Animal Pest Management Team have had their trapping kit stolen from the hockey fence line in the park. We are replacing the kit and moving the gear to a new storage space. Thank you for your patience while we get this sorted for you.
- Louis Foot, Pest Manager for UWEN continues to support youth leaders to learn best practice and achieve successes. Thanks so much Louis.
- We have had a broken trailer dumped in the restoration. Also members of the public started to leave household rubbish beside our inorganic refuse for collection. Thankfully, Auckland Council will be removing the trailer and youth leader Cam Scott has sorted all our inorganic waste to recycle or to fill. Thank you, Cam.
- Plant Pest Youth Leader Jerry from Kristin School, is going to begin using the CAMS app to report pest plants across the site. This is in alignment with best practice. Tony Cunningham (STAMP volunteer) has already mapped the Moth Plants that have self-populated at Rosedale Park when we cleared land in 2022. Thank you all for your continued efforts to enable us to manage without the use of sprays or commercial fertilizers. We are looking for more help from youth leaders or community members who would like to focus on pest plant management on site. Please email us!
- We had our first minor injury recently at Te Hōnonga a Iwi, a report was made the day of injury and Park Ranger Theo Jaycox was informed.
- We continue to support UWEN with their strategy piece and appreciate being a part of the ecology network.
- Thank you to Madeline Bennett, Sheryl Blythen and Glenda Adams for representing us at The Kumāra Awards. We were thrilled to be the recipients of an award for community collaboration and thank all stakeholders in Te Hōnonga a Iwi for their loyalty and hard work. There is a lot to learn from other award recipients and we hope to visit other initiatives to look at how we can improve.
- We are absolutely delighted to be selected as one of four Tāmaki Makaurau restorations to host the SBN Nature and Business Symposium guests for an afternoon in August. We look forward to supporting symposium attendees to undertake work on site and share some of our methods and principles with guests.
- We wish to thank Restoring Takarunga Hauraki for the bio-char they have gifted us. We are considering asking for Iwi and Council support to build biochar gabions to reduce stormwater erosion and reduce pollution entering the Alexander Stream. Building an understanding of what our stakeholders would like to achieve with managing erosion from flooding events in an industrial estate will help us understand what we can improve going forward. Stormwater 360 is a partner in Te Hōnonga a Iwi and industry experts in this space. We hope to talk with our partners to identify a low carbon solution.
- We have run five business and community working bees across April and continue to ready ourselves for planting the 2024 space.
- Woolworths Head Office has sourced 20 free laying hens for Te Hōnonga a Iwi that are kindly being donated by Better Eggs in Miranda. Gareth has helped us prepare to care for the chickens to ensure their welfare and IBC’s cat management leader Phillip continues to monitor and manage wild cats in the park to reduce risk to the chickens and birds. Thank you all, including Clement Chia and Nikhil Sewant from Countdown for realising this important regenerative agricultural initiative.
- We need to action securing a beehive for the restoration. We have made initial inquires, but need to progress this across May.
- Nicky attended the SME climate resilience workshop run by Tonkin and Taylor for AucklandNZ
- We have connected with the teacher leads from nine school involved with Te Hōnonga a Iwi, shared the May working bees and youth leadership roles.
Thank you again,
Nicky Shave
North Harbour Hockey Board Member,
Coordinator Te Hōnonga a Iwi
027 270 2736.
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