From birdwatcher to restoration leader

Anna Wang's path to environmental restoration began thousands of kilometres away, with a pair of binoculars and a tragic discovery.

In 2022, during the pandemic, Anna was living in Shanghai and had just taken up birdwatching. Each migration season, rare and beautiful birds pass through the region, but the same migrations attract illegal hunting. Poachers set up extremely fine fish nets near farmland to trap them.

“Too often, by the time we found the nets, the birds had already died from struggling and being strangled by the mesh.” Anna recalls. Seeing this was a turning point for Anna, and she began volunteering with local bird rescues.

Later, as a university student, Anna volunteered on the Motuihe and Motutapu islands, spending full days on hands-on conservation with zero screen time and a complete social media detox. For her, joining Te Hōnonga a Iwi was a natural next step. “I genuinely enjoy working alongside like-minded people,” she says, “and I want to help facilitate that same connection between our community and this beautiful land.”

For Anna, the heart of her role is creating connections between people and the environment. As working bee coordinator, she gets to see the results of that work straight away.

“It is satisfying to see the immediate, physical difference we make on the ground after a busy session with students and volunteers,” Anna says. And among her favourite moments are when corporate volunteers return once or twice a year. They would often look at areas of the restoration site and marvel at the developed land. Their delight at seeing the progress they helped create is, in Anna's words, simply rewarding.

Anna also loves the team dynamics at Te Hōnonga a Iwi, and she especially enjoys working alongside Nicky, the coordinator at Restoring Rosedale Park. As she herself puts it: “working alongside Nicky has been amazing, and I have genuinely learned a lot from her.”

Anna is currently completing a Master of Environmental Management at the University of Auckland, giving her a solid scientific foundation in ecological restoration. Her studies looked at the big picture of climate change while focusing on tangible actions that contribute to solutions.

“In many ways, my work with Te Hōno feels like a practical version of my studies,” she explains. Her work at Rosedale Park has let her take academic theory and apply it directly to real, physical community action.

Anna's passion for the environment doesn't stop there. She is also a keen citizen scientist who enjoys logging finds on iNaturalist and doing five-minute bird counts. Anna and her partner Alex are also working to get a backyard trapping initiative off the ground in their Onehunga neighbourhood.

When it's time to unwind, Anna turns to slow hobbies. She keeps a kombucha scoby hotel brewing at home, tends her backyard, and loves knitting and crochet. Lately she has also been in the pool, working out different breathing techniques as a beginner swimmer.