March 2025 project update

An incredible 1,145 volunteer hours were invested into increasing environmental health, social equity and local business resilience at Te Hōnonga a Iwi in the first quarter of this year. This equates to having more than two fulltime employees working on the project, a result we can be proud of. Please take a moment to acknowledge your part in the restoration. Thank you all for your continued effort and valuable contributions.

With our momentum building, we recognised the need to ensure succession planning and the development of our skills matrix. Bringing in expertise as we transition to an incorporated society with new leaders at the helm, will ensure strengthened, more resilient leadership.

We are delighted to welcome Elouise Kidd as Working Bee Coordinator at Te Hōnonga a Iwi. Elouise is our first contractor. She is a young, delightful, irrepressible leader. Elouise volunteered as Te Hōnonga a Iwi Pest Animal Youth Leader for 18 months before taking on the new role. She is passionate about conservation and brings extensive academic and practical capability to the working bees. Her position is funded by Auckland Council, ensuring service continuity and a proliferation of skills and knowledge within our knowledge base that is generated from her degrees in environmental science and design. This year, Elouise is undertaking her Masters in Biosecurity and Conservation, as well as working part time for Conversation NZ and Te Hōnonga a Iwi. She is also getting married at the time we write this report. We wish her and partner, Jayden, well for a bright, healthy future together.

Local sustainability and conservation hero Sarah Wakeford joins the UWEN team as the Albany Activator, helping ecological groups in our rohe generate positive action. Sarah wrote the recipe for inspiring people and is the ultimate charismatic leader. Hundreds of local youth know her as a past Rangitoto College teacher and a current sustainability service lead at Kristin School. Sarah has inspired a generation of people to invest in sustainability and nature and we are blessed to have her for a short tenure to increase local engagement. Sarah and Elouise’s positions are funded by Auckland Council.  We appreciate and thank the Council for its leadership and support in securing a seamless ecological service.

Youth who are eager to invest in regenerating nature using sustainability principles have put their best foot forward again this quarter, leading the way with 35 new youth leaders joining 19 incumbent youth who already have autonomous roles within the project. This is an epic response, way beyond what school service requirements ask of young people. It is our view that youth are sending a clear message to regeneration projects, and local SMEs, that they want to take action and have a voice in what their world will look like in the future. We are working quickly to ensure meaningful learning and development opportunities are offered in areas of the project students have expressed interest in.

Other differences we have made or actions we have taken include:

●      Uploading the ‘Be a Good Neighbour fliers’. These have been developed by local ecology and nursery specialist Nicholas Mayne to support our community to take affirming ecological action. Auckland Council and UWEN have helped to disseminate the fliers and they are available to view and share here. Communication lead Ashley Han has translated one of the documents into Mandarin.

●      We delivered monthly KPIs to Auckland Council and UWEN. We note we need to introduce measurement around the outcomes we achieve for the new community food garden. Please get in touch if you can offer insight into what those metrics could look like.

●      We attended the Regional Kai Network Hui, and visited the TUMG and OMG urban garden to learn how to produce food for local people. We also plan to visit Kelmarna community gardens this month.

●      We ran 14 working bees this month with three schools and youth leaders, focusing on weed clearance, site preparation, seed sowing and plant pest mapping. Special thanks to Kristin Prefects for their hard work and ongoing leadership at the restoration after school.

●      Youth leaders are investing in virtual mapping of pest plants, recording pest plant sites and we have two new youth leaders committed to learning how to remove or suppress pest plants across the site. To date the mapping team has completed mapping 900m2 onsite pest plants, identifying nine management units and locating the plant pests using CAMS app. This will allow virtual GPS locations of the pests and the ability to monitor and record our actions. We are super proud of the positive impact this team of bio, IT and business student leaders from Rangitoto and Kristin schools is having.

●      Youth leaders are trapping weekly at Te Hōnonga a Iwi and Centurion Reserve and continue to test stream water quality and report monthly.

●      We thanked Youth Lead Pest Animal Manager Madeline Bennett for her service as she took her leave following a year's service trapping along the stream. We wish her well for her bright future and remind all our volunteers, they are Te Hōno Alumni and are welcome to return in any way they wish in the future.

●      We celebrate Wilson School students and their teachers as they work with us each fortnight at the restoration. We enjoyed walking the stream this visit and finding a moment of peace in the regenerating bush alongside Alexander Stream. Working in partnership with people managing mixed abilities is important to mitigate climate change. Wilson School students offer unique insights and readily share their wisdom with us, enabling us to identify opportunities for mitigating risk and adapting to the climate crisis. Thank you all for making the effort each fortnight to work together to improve our local environment.

●      We have connected with Albany Junior High School this month generating opportunities for homestay students to join the project and for Year 8 students to invest in climate action. Thanks to Martene and Andrea for their proactive leadership.

●      We have supported the development of the UWEN strategic team and the formulation of annual operational objectives to deliver on UWEN’s strategies. This has culminated in devising a seven-year road map that captures UWEN’s value chain over time.

●      We have two new youth leaders from Kristin School committed to growing natives and food garden veggies from seed.

●      Trees that Count have gifted us an extra 1000 natives as infill plants this season, totalling 1500. We will be using coloured bamboo stakes to more readily identify the new plants within the incumbent kikuyu. This is the first year beyond the 2022 control section that we are planting directly into long kikuyu. Auckland Council has arranged for 1000 holes and 1000 bamboo stakes to delineate the year of planting to enable more successful planting given the harder planting season. The plants we use are the result of guidance from our park ranger Theo Jaycox, nursery specialist Nicholas Mayne and the plants we grow ourselves from our seed whakapapa model.  We expect to be planting the 1000 2024 natives we have held while we wait for Fulton Hogan to clear the apex site. Theo has also kindly supplied us with an additional 30 flax knives that we use weekly to release natives from weeds. He has also sourced an additional 20 Matai from Kaipatiki Project which is exciting for us to plant at Matariki. Normally the men at Paremoremo Prison share the natives they grow in the prison nursery. We are fortunate to have local natural capital investors willing to donate trees to plant.

●      Elouise has been working hard throughout March to orientate four new animal pest youth leaders to the trapline, helping them with health and safety knowledge and teaching the students about using the CAMS app to ensure we capture correct data and report our outcomes.

●      A1 Landscapes has gifted us 16m3 fresh tree mulch for composting in the Habour Hockey bioreactors to generate high quality compost from hockey’s food scraps and organic waste for players to reduce their fees with leftover compost heading to the community food garden or the restoration. Two tonnes of compost is underway. Huge thanks to George Kings North from A1 Landscapes for enabling us to double our compost and increase its quality, keeping our waste and theirs local to drive down transport emissions.

●      Cat from Grow my Greens is also gifting Te Hōnonga a Iwi their organic waste we are converting to compost for planting this season's natives.

●      We are underway with applying for $50k funding to complete the community garden infrastructure this winter at the annual Dingle Foundation epic working bee. This includes a rat-proof composting system to divert hockey's food scraps without attracting rats to increase soil health in the community garden. We hope we can begin to take other SME organic waste in the future. We hope to secure funding for a wheelchair accessible glasshouse with durable flooring, an accessible equipment shed, two 30,000-litre water tanks, two smaller IBC tanks, a shade house, irrigation equipment including misters, outdoor seating and tables and a caravan that will enable people to shelter, socialise and have refreshments at the community garden. Our funding opportunities include the Mazda Fund, the Upper Harbour Local Board community grant, Foundation North Quick Response fund, the Air NZ Everyday Environmental Fund, the Sky City Community Grant Youth led, Harcourts and we have received $7k from NZ Landcare to buy a wheelchair accessible shed for our equipment. Local businesses and people continue to offer their materials, hire equipment and their skills and time to achieve our vision.

●      Special thanks to foundation business, NZ Machine Hire Albany, for loaning us their digger and truck to shift mulch this month. This generous input saved us hours of time and savings in trailer hire. If you have a caged trailer you could share with us on occasion, we would appreciate the cost savings you would offer us.

●      We need a vegetable garden organic seed sponsor. Please connect with us if you would like to invest $2000 or part of, each year into the community good garden produce.

●      Te Hōnonga a Iwi received a sponsored trap from Give a Trap this month. We will be using this gift to trap in the new food garden. Huge thanks to our donor for enabling us to control pest animals as we cultivate food and native bush for the community.

●      We met with Olivia Li, Consultant Youth Leader, Te Hōnonga a Iwi to listen to her guidance with working and communicating with young people, to hear what matters most to this generation and what they expect of us. We also heard how we can make improvements with our diversity and inclusion initiatives to attract and retain talented youth. Olivia is frantic in her last year of school. Switching her role so she could add value in a different way within the project when she is under greater time pressures was important. She was offered three choices and decided she was most interested in helping develop strategy, playing to her special interests in ensuring inclusion. We have already locked in four 90-minute consult sessions with Olivia across 2025 and look forward to seeking her guidance again soon.

●      We helped UWEN formulate a wastewise application. Playing to our strengths locally offers an opportunity to raise the bar together and achieve at pace and scale. Having the chance to offer reciprocity to organisations we have been dependent on for knowledge and skills has been important to us and we appreciate the chance to help when our skills allow. One of the outcomes of sharing expertise and knowledge is getting to know each other better, developing trust and gaining opportunity to manage systemic risks using holistic approaches that have the ability to leverage long-term gains.

●      We welcome new business partners UL Solutions to the restoration and look forward to working alongside them to improve environmental health.

●      We met Craig Bishop, Head of Environmental Science AUT, to talk about developing meaningful research opportunities at Te Hōnonga a Iwi. We are specifically looking for students who may wish to generate knowledge in the following areas:

○      Measuring carbon sequestration within soil in urban regeneration projects

○      Generating a novel native or non-invasive exotic urban, edible, fire resistant cover crop that enables land or freshwater regeneration without the use of sprays or commercial fertilizers

○      The value of working with citizens to measure bio aquatic value in Alexander Stream (think Fish Doorbell)

○      The use of IT or technology to support regenerating corridors of land and waterways across the urban ecosystem

○      Measure the efficacy of increasing soil health by inoculating soil with regenerative microbiome at regular site intervals

○      The use of drones for dropping native seed bombs along urban corridors to increase native biodiversity

○      Measure freshwater bio aquatic diversity in real time with a fish door and citizen science

○      Measure the efficacy of using regenerative agriculture to regenerate native bush in the urban environment

○      Measure the social value of working in nature for people managing neurodiversity and people managing their mental health.

○      Measure the the small to medium size business impacts of investing in Te Hononga a Iwi: Restoring Rosedale Park

○      Understanding the value of SMEs in contributing to climate positivity

○      Use of biocontrols in managing pest plant invasion in the urban setting

○      Examine the efficacy of regenerative agricultural techniques compared with traditional restoration techniques on plant survival and growth rates

○      Longitudinal analysis of the impact of using an integrated model of activation on social cohesion in a climate changed era.

●      We have also spoken with the research development team, including the School of Biological Sciences, the Centre for Climate, Biodiversity and Society through the Partnership and Innovation Manager at the University of Auckland in the hope that students there might wish to undertake research with us.

●      We welcomed Mia Irons, student in the Bachelor of Sport and Recreation at AUT, to undertake her work integrated learning with the restoration. It is fantastic to work alongside Mia and gain understanding on how we can improve our offerings.

●      Sarah has begun to connect with Fletchers and Ngāti Whātua regarding connecting with new residents at Ōkahukura to support environmental and social connectivity through Te Hono. We would like the chance to help people who are new to our rohe to plant in ways that positively impact nature, set up pest animal controls early in the piece, extend traplines down into the adjacent priority two ecological site, Fernhill Escarpment, test freshwater quality below the new development ahead of the water entering the moana at Lucas Creek, and support the residents to retain their onsite biomass and convert it to compost to replenish the newly constructed land. Tracy Davis from Ngāti Whātua is interested in viewing a sustainable development model for this new subdivision.

●      There are two notable media releases we recommend taking time to watch. Our priority focus at Te Hono is to increase soil health. If you are interested in growing food, consider watching this movie with soil health in mind. Flow has won recent awards in the entertainment industry and captures hope within the climate crisis era. The trailer link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZccxuj2RY and the movie can be viewed on Apple Plus.

●      Following the sad passing of Nikki Kaye last year, Blue nature has been back in contact this month hoping to reactivate plans to use drones to carry seed bombs at the restoration. With the aim to inspire and educate students on the role of technology in increasing biodiversity. We look forward to continuing Nikki’s vision for a brighter future.

●      We are meeting with SNB to discuss using Te Hōnonga a Iwi as a field trip destination for conference attendees at the nature and business symposium.

●      We are entering Harbour Hockey and Te Hōnonga a Iwi into the Environmental Sustainability awards at Sport New Zealand this year focussing on the onsite circularity of waste biomass and the generation of a valuable commodity from diverting waste to fill to our compostors to increase soil health.