November 2025 project update

As we enter December, our sustainable mahi continues to be documented, analysed and informs our strategy and workplans. Continuous, transparent reporting has generated significant insights and new understanding of our place and people. Previously untapped talent and resources have been realised through growing our stakeholders across six sectors, to generate a substantial new local value chain that enables the promotion of individual, community, environmental and organisational health and wellbeing. A remarkable accomplishment that investors appreciate when they visit the restoration. Generating new value within communities can be seen as an impossible task. The people and places who have committed to work together to regenerate Rosedale Park and the Albany Basin are proof that it is possible to take meaningful climate and conservation action. In dollar terms the new value our partnerships have created exceeds $840,000, delivered by 4000 volunteers generating more than 8000 volunteer hours and significant resources per annum.

Our vision is bold. We continue to work collaboratively to offer sustainable change, and a brighter future for planetary health and people. We have verbal and written stakeholder feedback that they are feeling excited, hopeful, motivated and frequently, they wish to continue collaborating. Music to our ears. It’s neat to belong within a culture of sustainable growth that is developing momentum at a time when systems pressures are mounting and political decisions are reducing capability.

Our gains have inspired new opportunities to scale canopy cover and pest control across the Albany Basin. Imagine the beauty, and ease, of living and working in the greenest business development district in Aotearoa. The coolness that we will generate from developing natural shade. The colours of the new ngāhere/forest, vertical green walls or rooftop gardens like Kristin School’s achievements. Consider the relief of having dappled light from spring growth of neighbouring trees that will obscure exposed concrete. The food security we can provide our people, and wildlife, and how it will lift people’s spirits and engender enhanced independence of species returning to live in the rohe. Birdsong will begin to break through the white noise of local industry. Streams you can swim in during your lunch break will invite a chance to relive childhood memories and offer children a new city experience. The value of your cumulative mahi is immense.

We have a short window to regenerate Papatūānuku, our stunning natural landscape, and begin to mitigate pollution and reverse global warming. Extraordinary people within Te Hōnonga a Iwi are bringing their strengths to the table, and investing in climate positive regeneration of local land, fresh and marine water and atmospheric ecosystems. We have young people leading with grace and respect for Mātauranga Māori shared by outstanding, generous indigenous leadership. We work in a strengths-based model with courageous businesses who are finding ways to take responsibility for their footprint and contribute in meaningful ways to regenerate Te Taiao. Educational institutes are championing investing in us and producing new knowledge that will guide our development. And now, we are on the cusp of securing the local resources we need to achieve landscape scale change for our children, their children, nature and future businesses to thrive.

The use of a more-than-human model invites a scale of change in biodiversity that is exciting. And, for future Te Hōnonga a Iwi leaders, it won’t be inconceivable to use the wealth of opportunity that exists within our rohe to support our neighbours to regenerate the natural world, amplifying positive impact for all local communities. Envisage growth at this scale using our integrated capabilities. Glocal change is where we need to head to ensure future safety and resilience of people, nature and businesses. It is within our reach.

Our restoration outcomes are driven by a unified commitment to regenerating local socio-ecological and financial systems, decarbonising and reducing pollution and waste. The project, led by Ngāti Whātua’s thought leadership, in partnership with 75 local organisations including Auckland Council, regenerative, ecology and social science specialists, and the education and sport sectors has scaled to deliver climate, social and ecological action across almost every week of the year within the Albany Basin.

The difference we have made is determined by Maramataka Māori and the voices of our stakeholders including the planet, young people and older adults. We are well on our way to building a positive legacy, offering optimism, opportunity and cohesion.

The things that we did and the difference we made across November include:

-        We delivered 31 business, school or youth leader working bees at the restoration, Māra Kai, water quality assessment, drone filming or trapping.

-        The maintenance requirements for the 2025 site are vast, so we need ongoing help to ensure we manage invasive plant pests well. In addition to weed releasing, checking stakes and mulching, we have built the new bioreactor fleet and begun to fill three out of nine, sequestering three tonnes of mulch for compost.

-        A1 Sure Services, local landscapers, together with Grow My Greens have given us 13 tonnes of waste biomass this season. A notable figure, and waste that was destined for the fill has been retained locally and diverted to mulch or compost. We are indebted to both organisations for their commitment to environmental health, and to Hilton Brown Swimming Albany and Atlas Concrete for enabling onsite deliveries. Everyone is doing their bit.  And it is seriously stacking up.

-        Local businesses, Business North Harbour, North Harbour Hockey, ICB, Albany Vet, and Global Signage Solutions have all worked hard to continue to invest in the restoration - thank you all.

-        We welcomed foundation business partners, Dingle Foundation and their amazing corporate sponsors, KPMG, Gurit back to work hard with weed management and bioreactor set up to enable us to use homegrown compost next year. These organisations know the restoration well, know what to do and have a wide array of skills that enables us to achieve repairs, builds, as well as ecological outcomes. It is fun working with these like-minded teams and they invariably solve problems we are carrying that we can't afford to pay to get fixed or do not have the skills base to address ourselves. Working with different sectors and professions adds so much value to our chain.

-        We also met an incredible team from AIA this month and loved working alongside them to create massive outcomes in the 2025 area. It was a day we expected 24 degrees and we planned for shorter session times, longer breaks and built in frequent water stops. We pivoted in the afternoon session when it hit 30 degrees and were unified in our decision to finish early to ensure wellbeing. We are thrilled to receive a suggestion that AIA returns four times a year from next year and look forward to partnering with them to generate a legacy they can be proud of.

-        The trapping team is catching a lot more rats than possums weekly.

-        We have a new trapper who will be working the Alexander Awa trapline.

-        We are managing seven traplines within the basin and look forward to working in partnership with Louis, UWEN and local businesses to develop, implement and maintain an additional 10 traplines situated in Fernhill, Burnside, North Shore Golf Course, Lucas Creek and Unsworth as top priorities. We set up the lines with expertise from UWEN, our Park Ranger and our Activator, Elouise. We run the education and reporting sessions and manage the maintenance and safety updates. We need businesses to commit to two hours a week to ‘own’ a trapline. Please let us know if you would like to be a part of the trapping teams!

-        The chicken caring team continue to care for the chooks seven days a week so they can support increasing soil health for planting

-        We helped to lead our second 200 person Travel Lightly Bike Pop Up in partnership with Kaipatiki Project, North Harbour Hockey Association and Auckland Council.

-        We attended the Auckland Predator Free hui, another free ANCAD governance session, and Elouise is loving the chance to learn from Māori ecology specialist, Charmaine Baillie at Kaipatiki Project.

-        We joined the second Northern Te Taiao Network meeting and look forward to the opportunity to learn from peers and share knowledge and resources. It is always an inspiring day to unite and hear what restoration peers are accomplishing. Thank you Auckland Council for your ongoing investment in a number of education opportunities for us to develop. 

-        We enjoyed our inaugural Te Hōnonga Iwi Think Tank session. This is a strategic group who agree to meet quarterly for 90 mins to generate ideas and solutions in relation to our strategic direction and financial operating model. Think Tank members include Mark Delaney, Viridis, Damian Young, Zealandia Consulting, Subha Rajanaidhu, Public Health Specialist, Sam Hill, Auckland Council Environment Manager, Cadey Korson, Social Science specialist and Massey University academic. We will be approaching a financial specialist to round off the Tank skills matrix. November’s meeting centered around how to prioritise targeting BID businesses to active climate action.

-        We collected $300 worth of chicken feed from Farmlands Helensville and really thank Elouise for collecting, Farmlands for supporting six weeks of feed and Student Leader Business Activation Mariko for leveraging the relationship with Farmlands. It helps a lot.

-        Untangled Landscapes Svea Burling is very kindly getting a new enclosure ready for the chooks to spend summer at their chicken resort! Without Svea and Matt, the restoration would not have happened or be functioning as it is. Untold thanks to our key business partners in the project.

-        The launch of the Christmas Campaign has been fun, bringing colour and inspiration to the community who can invest in buying a meaningful Christmas gift for family, friends or work colleagues that really benefits the environment! Please support our kaupapa in any way you can this year.

-        We have scheduled hui with Kristin School, Key Industries and Business North Harbour to talk about the possibility of partnering to scale canopy cover growth in the BID as well as continue greening the Rosedale Corridor. We wish to offer 50 new North Harbour business partners opportunity to increase their sustainability by investing their strengths into the development of our urban ngāhere and food security by working on the restoration, Mara Kai, or starting to conserve water, increase water quality, become a compost hub for their street to build soil health, divert organic waste to compost locally, green their commercial land with natives or fruit/vegetables, trap rats, operate an urban trapline, or donate cash to Te Hōnonga a Iwi to improve environmental health across the rohe.

-        Elouise organised a hui with Auckland University School of Design lecturer, Gabriela Nuri Baron, author of an incredible model for environmental conservation Design for Environmental Conservation A Toolkit that Enables Sustainable, Participatory and Distributed, to request consideration of partnering with Te Hōnonga a Iwi for capstone projects that focus on sustainability, the environment and people, a match made in heaven for us. We are wanting to develop art and design within the restoration and would like the chance to invest in student development if the education objectives and our culture can offer value to student learning and development. These important academic opportunities are being generated by our contractors and leaders who are linking us with the chance to measure outcomes and develop new insights and knowledge. We are indebted to young leaders and highly value their important place within any socio-ecological regeneration project. Thank you, Elouise, for your mahi on this. And Daniel for bringing his knowledge to the table. Thanks to Warwick, Natalie, Allanah, Craig, Rebecca, Stanley, Gabriela and Cadey, university academics who are our thought leaders and innovators. You are irreplaceable.

-        Sinead, Auckland Council, supported the opportunity to improve our cultural competency and awareness through organising another cultural induction with Te Kawerau ā Maki. It was fascinating to listen to Tyler Rakataura Taua-Gordon teach us about iwi kapuapa, history, values and mahi. We hope we can support Te Kawerau ā Maki to realise their vision to rebuild their marae at Te Henga and help with planting there. Huge thanks to Tyler for all your positive energy and care as we learn. Thank you for welcoming our people and we hope we can meet with you again soon. Ngā manaakitanga.

-        We have submitted three funding reports and KPIs this month.

-        We have completed the Waste Minimisation grant funding request and will keep you updated.

-        Our business activators celebrated Liam being selected to be interviewed for a business scholarship at Sydney University. And we have formulated a plan to re-approach Louvre Tec, Go Media, vegetable seed and security camera companies to request investment in the restoration.

-        We urgently need to secure funding or an insurance partner to sponsor our annual insurance costs for assets and liability as a new entity. Please let us know if you can help.

-        The signage team completed the installation of 10 additional signs this month and the place feels great! Thank you Elouise, Reina, Matthew and Steven for your ongoing commitment to realise this important vision!

-        Elouise in her humble way has completed the installation of the Māra Kai irrigation systems! Unbelievable talents and so appreciated by us all, thank you so much and to Jayden for the loan of tools.

-        We had Board and strategy committee meetings in addition to the Think Tank. We are thinking of Komal’s whānau with the loss of a family member recently and honour their important life and place in your family. Stanley Friedlick chose to retire this month and we wish to thank him for a lifetime of work supporting students to learn at AUT. We are grateful all committee members are investing their skills and knowledge with us.

-        New water quality leader at Lucas Creek, Peytyn, who is local to Oteha, enjoyed time with inanga researcher, indefatigable Anastasia, Mountains to Sea. Sarah Wakeford, Kristin School, Peytyn and Anastasia talked about how we can best offer service to measure water quality in the catchment and we look forward to beginning in measuring quality in Lucas Creek shortly. Mountains to Sea continue to lead from the front and we love learning from them! We hope Kristin will have the opportunity to support inanga to reside within the Lucas Creek ecosystem.

-        We thoroughly enjoyed UWEN’s volunteer party and had a great time catching up with UWEN volunteers, hearing what they are achieving and spending time celebrating the year together! Thank you, Rachael and Louis, Tim and Fiona for the amazing feast and presentations.

-        We met with Watercare this month to understand their need to install a new sewage pipe across the restoration site. The process has been positive and we are well supported by Theo Jaycox, Nicholas Mayne, Mark Delaney and Elouise. We support the establishment of an infrastructure that mitigates sewage overflow risk and look forward to the unexpected opportunities work on site might offer. Working in partnership with Iwi, UWEN, Auckland Council (AC), MTS, Healthy Waters and Watercare is a great way to enable any organisation to pivot when required and still offer real value during a construction process. We thank Nick Mayne and Theo for their support to undertake work at the start of the catchment next year, whether we need to or not, we would love this opportunity. We also thank AC and Rita, Healthy Waters for the opportunity to look at clearing the apex and planting there in 2026 as well as clearing and planting where two large trees are falling across the awa. We will never run out of work and have great choices and people to work with, an amazing position to be in going forward.

-        We enjoyed attending the Upper Harbour Local Board investiture and congratulated returning and new board members. The ceremony was special and reflected our cultural groups.

-        We met with a Planetary Accounting representative this month to discuss the merits of using the Planetary Accounting system to measure impact and performance. Understanding our impact on finite planetary resources seems prudent and an important step to take that will enable us to measure more than just our carbon footprint. We have the opportunity to do an accounting course with them and take that knowledge forward in our reporting. We will share our decision in due course.

-        Matt Wardle, Te Hōnonga a Iwi Secretary and Board member, with support from Elousie and youth leader Miriam, have begun to film the water catchment using drones, his flying skills and IT expertise. Being able to show investors and the community the beauty and life that lives within this awa is an important piece of work to achieve to support Iwi, Uru Whakaro, Mountains to Sea and Auckland Council ongoing investment in increasing water quality. Thank you so much team for investing days of work in realising this vision.

-        Rebecca Rogers, Auckland University of Technology academic, and Matt Wardle are in the planning phase of filming the ngāhere to track growth over time. Huge thanks to our education specialists for enabling us to improve our outcomes.

-        Matt is transferring the Te Hōnonga a Iwi Teams platform from North Harbour Hockey to an independent platform as part of our final transition to a new entity.

-        The NHHA board is formulating an MOU with Te Hōnonga a Iwi to facilitate ongoing positive partnership and to meet Auckland Council LOA requirements.

-        All restoration LOAs (4) are undergoing a request for a name change and a five-year extension in LOA timeframe to ensure complete transfer of legal and financial responsibility to the new Te Hōnonga a Iwi entity. We thank Auckland Council and North Harbour Hockey Board and Management for their outstanding support and leadership to enable Te Hōnonga a Iwi to scale.

-        School teachers and students remain the most impactful contributors to the restoration since inception. We wish to take time to acknowledge, celebrate and thank our student and education investors. You are remarkable, talented and hardworking people who offer enormous hope for the future. Thank you for the time and energy you have invested this year. It really matters and your leadership is improving our ability to deliver results to you rightly expect. Student service teaching leaders Emily Kennedy, Sarah Wakeford, Kathryn Huish, Gail Goodwin, Martene Mathews, and Sarah Underdown, we acknowledge the work you do to plan and secure the opportunities and for your outstanding contribution to the project. Thanks to you especially.

-        We are reaching out to obtain funding to begin developing a longitudinal study on wellbeing at Te Hōnonga a Iwi with Huber Social and Dr Cadey Korson, Massey University.

-        Cadey has connected us with Esri GNS platform providers to discuss the opportunity to use the platform to collect data. Matt Wardle is advising as an internal stakeholder.

-        To our 4000 volunteers who belong and invest in Te Hōnonga a Iwi, Kaumatua Richard Nahi and Ngāti Whatua, with additional cultural support from Tyler, Te Kawerau ā Maki, Te Hōnonga a Iwi Schools, ECE, Lifestyle Villages, Paremoremo Prison, Journalists, Communications, Socials, Graphics, Translation, Trapping, Chicken Care, Business Activation, Plant Growth and Survival, Pest Plant, Composting, Mara Kai, Water Quality, Mentorship, Student Leaders, Film and Photography, Signage, Presentations teams, Business Partners particularly Untangled Landscapes, NGOs including Upper Waitemāta Ecology Network, The Dingle Foundation, Mountains to Sea, and sports organisations especially North Harbour Hockey Association, Harbour Sports and Hockey New Zealand, community members, Auckland Council experts, thank you, thank you, thank you. Please take time to reflect on the project's accomplishments and understand your positive impact.

-        To our funders, NZ Landcare Trust, BUPA Foundation, Auckland Council, Sky City Foundation, Mountains to Sea and Foundation North, untold thanks for trusting us to deliver climate positive results. It has been an unforgettable year reaching canopy cover in some areas, having our own small nursery, growing 1,500 new natives, securing the development of a 100-year catchment plan, completing the Māra Kai to harvest waste organics, and, deliver healthy vegetables and fruit in return, mapping onsite plant pests, maintaining 6,000 new natives, mapping the site with 3D imagery, producing ecological metrics, onboarding two amazing working bee coordinators/activator, developing and implementing two new traplines, securing $50k funding for contractor services in 2026, attracting and retaining 75 organisations that invest in Te Taiao with us, building new soil and soil health, harvesting 13 tonnes of waste local biomass to compost and planting 4,400 new natives.

-        A special acknowledgement of Sheryl, Sam and Matthew Wardle. The weeks of work you have invested into Te Hōnonga a Iwi has generated so much positive change. Huge thanks to each of you for your achievements.

-        Marina and Eva, for years now you have been investing in us as water quality youth leaders, prefects for Kristin and working bee leaders. The positive impact you have made is outstanding. To have a three-year water quality data base is unusual but of high value. We wish you both, Alicia, Sandy and James a happy summer. Massive thanks and mihi to each of you as one of our founding whānau, you are Alumni and forever a part of this special place and its future.

-        To Elouise and Daniel, we all wish to publicly thank you for the immense work you have both achieved across 2025. Your talents are numerous, your passion infectious, your rigour a godsend, your energy remarkable, your communications exemplary and your ideas representative of the future we are all committed to seeing and who we wish to become. Without you both, we could not have achieved half of what has been delivered this year, we are indebted. The culture of care and innovation you have brought to our place has created a wonderful, exciting and cool place to work. Bravo Elouise and Daniel. You are very much appreciated and valued highly by us all.

Finally, looking forward, we ask you to consider letting your neighbouring businesses know about the project. We will be asking companies to undertake a commitment to do one thing each for our people and nature in 2026. Conserving water, reducing water pollution, storing rain water in tanks, operating a trapline, trapping rats, diverting organics and green waste to our local composting hubs, hosting a compost hub for your street, planting natives in your property, greening your walls and rooflines, growing native seedlings, investing $1,000 a year or working at Te Hononga a Iwi restoration are all actions we will help you take to create positive change.

Thank you all for your commitment, loyalty, action, and investments in Te Hōnonga a Iwi. We wish you, your people and place well across Christmas and summer. And, we look forward to welcoming you back, and working together to expand our positive impacts.

Te Hōnonga a Iwi team.