Having an Impact: Tū Mai Taonga's Second Year

KATE WATERHOUSE (Chair of Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust)

At the end of June Tū Mai Taonga issued its 2023 Impact Report. Not a progress report, not a tally of rats and feral cats dispatched but an impact report. Yes the technical data is all there if you want it – held in TMT’s GIS system that maps what tracks, traps, bait stations and people are where and when. 

It’s an example of how the Jobs For Nature investment in TMT is having much wider benefits for Aotea. That GIS platform built for TMT is now evolving into the platform that all conservation work on Aotea from Windy Hill in the south to Okiwi in the north can be stored in. It will make the island’s significant efforts to restore lost biodiversity and mauri visible to all. It’s one of the many ways TMT is building conservation capacity and infrastructure on Aotea.

Also visible are the project’s finances, structure, governance and people. Transparency is a key concern of the Steering Committee and it’s been my privilege to serve on it for the last three years. It’s been a rocky road at times, having to build a conservation workforce and a project organisation from scratch has taken some time. The 2023 report shows the project invested $1.46 million on Aotea last year, created 30 local jobs - allowing mana whenua to return home and build livelihoods, delivered 130 training sessions and enabled 61 formal qualifications, and is paving the way for the restoration of the island’s indigenous biodiversity. Check out the full report here:

www.tumaitaonga.nz

Some of my favourite moments have been about what’s happening on the Broken Islands where TMT has been doing a ground-based eradication using baits. Once the rats had gone lizards, barely recorded in pre-operation monitoring, suddenly appeared in their hundreds in tracking tunnels on Rangiahua. Elaine Ngawaka celebrated having strawberries for Christmas instead of the rats getting them all.

In November some TMT crew accompanied Auckland Council seabird scientists to the small islands between the Wairahi peninsula and the bigger Broken Islands. These islands are covered in burrows and will be important source populations for seabirds recolonising a future predator free Aotea. Hiku Davis helped the team avoid culturally sensitive sites on the islands skills were shared.

I feel sad that we have been living with the impacts of rats for so long that we have forgotten what abundance looks, sounds like and feels like. There used to be enough oī to harvest. Now this isn’t the case. Many people are disconnected from taonga species and the forests and islands where they used to be found. One of the many precious gifts of this project is to see that already starting to change. Another is the expression of Te Ao Māori values in conservation on Aotea and the return of tangata whenua to their whenua to work on the project. And yet another is the opportunity to raise technical conservation capability on Aotea across all aspects of operations by sharing TMT systems and being a trial site for new tools coming down the pipeline from PF2050’s programme of investment.  

There’s challenges ahead that is for sure, as we get our heads around what it will take to eradicate rats from this island – the feral cats are doable and TMT is getting on with that. But we are up for the hard conversations, because the initial project research showed such high support for the goals, and we feel the responsibility to meet them. Look out for TMT at the annual Ecology Vision event in October or get in touch via the website. Ngā mihi ki a koutou. 

Kate Waterhouse is Chair of the Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust, Deputy Chair of the Auckland Conservation Board and a member of the steering committee of Tū Mai Taonga.