Ngāti Kuia’s vision of restoring the Pelorus/ Te Hoiere catchment from mountains to sea has been boosted with a $7.5 million grant from the Jobs for Nature Fund announced yesterday by Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allen.
Iwi chair Waihaere Mason says the project has been a priority since its settlement in 2014.
Whānau have started horticultural training, and a nursery is being built at Titiraukawa to grow natives to plant along waterways.
The fund will pay for 79 full-time equivalent jobs over four years focused on restoring freshwater across the catchment, eliminating predators and weeds, developing land management tools and running the nursery.
Mr Mason says he has watched Te Hoiere awa deteriorate since the 1940s when he remembers whānau gathering kaimoana from the Havelock estuary.
