Each day, volunteers in our community step up to help build a healthy, thriving and resilient community and environment.
These volunteers are our everyday heroes! This year, we saw more volunteers than ever lace up their boots to restore biodiversity, checking traps on Karioi and surrounding coastline and in their own backyard. Nearly 400 local families now have traps in their own backyard through the Karioi Backyard Hub, while 130 volunteers check more than 120 km of trap lines at least once a month.
In the meantime, staff have been working hard to intensify predator control on the maunga, targeting possums, stoats and rats at a landscape scale. In the past year, we’ve installed 500 bait stations across 250 hectares for ground control of predators. With amazing volunteers supporting our rangers to fill these bait stations, we are potentially eliminating the need for future aerial applications of 1080 on Karioi.
Seeing people connect to nature, and being inspired to take care of it, is the number one goal for the Karioi Project.
Another goal has been to create employment in conservation for local people in our community. We now have a team of 15 people working with us, including young graduates from our Manaaki Ao education programme (run in partnership with Raglan Area School). It’s been amazing seeing these kinds of results borne from a commitment to restore biodiversity in our community.
To continue on this journey, we’re working extremely hard to meet the costs of the project. Some great funders, donors and businesses have already put their names behind our cause, but we still need your help.
We would love your support for our ongoing work so our team can achieve even better results for the mountain and coastline we all love.
This season, perhaps consider donating to the Karioi Project. Donate in your name or as a gift on behalf of others, and give back to biodiversity in your own backyard. Help protect Karioi and the vision to restore our coastal forest, streams and wetlands from the mountain to the sea.
Watch our 12 minute film online and for more information -www.karioiproject.co.nz
