Support our community to restore Taranaki's natural environment
We can’t do it alone. We need your help! Any money you donate will go directly to supporting Taranaki projects restoring and protecting biodiversity. You get to choose where it goes to. And if you can’t help out with cash, you can help in other ways.
Cross-Regional Collaboration
In early December, our Taranaki and Wellington Wai Connection teams joined Dr. Huhana Smith at Waikōkopu Grove in Kuku. Huhana has deep roots in this whenua through her whakapapa connections. In her day job she is Associate Professor at the School of Art at Massey University. A painter, her art and research also take the form of environmental projects collaborating with iwi, farmers, artists, hydrologists, ecologists, GIS and drone mappers, landscape architects and climate scientists – work that saw her awarded an MNZOM for services to the environment.
Our teams had the opportunity to learn from Huhana about her restoration journey over the past 20 years and hearing about her extensive experience collaborating between many different communities. In exchange we helped her do stream weed maintenance on the Waikōkopu and bring in some of our monitoring skills & expertise to expand on her mahi.
Watch Huhana’s Freshwater Champion video to learn more about her mahi. Freshwater Champions 2024 – Professor Huhana Smith
