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December 04, 2024
Protecting native forests, unlocking ancestral potential
Atereano Mateariki
Posted On December 4, 2024
Download AudioProtecting native ecosystems is crucial as biodiversity loss accelerates, and Te Rātā Whakamaru has made a real difference around the Te Arawa lakes.
Tomorrow, Crown Research Institute Scion and Rotoiti 15 Trust will wrap up their Jobs for Nature project at Te Waiiti Marae, reflecting on two years of training kaimahi in pest control, plant propagation, and monitoring environmental threats like myrtle rust.
Trust chair Arapeta Tahana says that throughout the project’s existence, their goal was to find native tree strains resilient enough to withstand the effects of myrtle rust, which disrupts the growth of new shoots, deforms leaves and stems, and causes foliage to die.
He says the biggest takeaway is the new skills kaimahi on the ground has learned through the project.
“Just to put it in context, none of these people had worked in this environmental sciences sector, so they came in with very little knowledge. However, these were all people that had grown up in Māori communities and had interacted with ngāhere, but we’re never kind of experts in that space. We found that they grew significantly. So within a year or so, they were keeping pace with the scientists, because they had to learn a whole new language. As an example, the Latin names of a whole lot of trees, as well as the Māori names,” says Tahana.
Arapeta Tahana says this project showed, how our people, when in environments our tupuna were in, it unlocks our potential.
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