A wrap up of everything the team has been doing in the past month and a quick look forward to upcoming events you will want to make sure are in your calendar.
Before we talk about everything that’s happened on the project site in October, just a reminder that we have our open day to allow our supporters, other environmental groups and members of the public an opportunity to learn more about what we are doing coming up from 9am to 11.30am on Saturday, 5 November at the National Hockey Centre.
The presenters will briefly talk about development of the sustainable model, and how we increase soil quality and plant survival using low carbon, bioorganic solutions. We will then take guests to visit the restoration site and discuss novel aspects of the restoration including the 10 climate mitigation initiatives, the use of Johnston-Su bioreactors, the cover crop and the use of recycled water to drive down our carbon emissions. Refreshments are provided.
Please share this event through your social media or organisation newsletters and bring anyone interested in our project along on the day.
Actions across October:
- We continue to connect with Mana Whenua with an acute awareness of members heavy loads and ensure we inform, consult and request advice. We haven’t yet achieved our goal to welcome rangitahi to leadership aspects of the project youth might be interested in investing their time and we need to work harder to try to connect with kohanga reo and the only kura on the North Shore to understand if they might be interested in developing partnerships with Te Hōnonga a Iwi.
- After 3 postponements due to weather conditions, our Montessori students, the youngest just 2 years old, arrived by foot to complete their work sowing the cover crop in their area. Emma Kwon, Centre Manager is leaving her position and unsure whether the partnership will be able to continue. We are grateful to Emma for her vision and preparedness to work in partnership to enable our youngest stakeholders to be valued members of the restoration this year. We look forward to welcoming Montessori back in the future when they can contribute.
- We wish to thank Tony Cunningham for his ongoing work at the site across the month replanting natives that have been removed by pukeko, cleaning and removing the spades and rakes, attending all the mulch and planting working bees, and helping to set up the water supply to the reactors.
- All the tools were returned to Dan Marrow, Park Ranger. Thank you for enabling us to use the tools Dan, this has contributed to us being able to reduce our carbon footprint further be reusing available resources to reduce unnecessary manufacturing and procurement of new materials.
- John Cambridge has also put thought into how to increase the life cycle of the inorganic rubbish that has been retrieved on site. Dan is managing the removal of the inorganic material.
- Anna Harrison kindly nominated Te Hōnonga a Iwi for a Kūmara Placemaker Award. Interestingly, with all the awards we have been nominated this year, the project often fits across all or most award categories – a good sign for a sustainability project that is reliant on a high level of social, environmental and economic integration to be successful. Thank you, Anna, for investing time into that nomination and for your ongoing presence across the year with enabling strategic sustainable partnerships with schools and youth.
- In addition to the Kūmara nomination, we have been notified that Te Hōnonga a Iwi is a finalist for the Harbour Sports Excellence Awards for the Community Impact category. Congratulations everyone, a wonderful outcome and opportunity to share the team’s vision and where we are at in terms of trialling new sustainable, bioorganic methods to regenerate ecological and social wellbeing in Rosedale.
- Rotary Albany applied for $4k funding for Te Hōnonga a Iwi to source our rock for our sustainable signage that will allow us to advertise our name (in moss) and install QR codes that will enable visitors to the site to link directly to education links about the project. We will inform you of the outcome of this application.
- Briar Broad, Whitebait Connection is waiting for funding to set up the education sessions that are needed for us to do our bio aquatic diversity analysis this year. We will action that as soon as possible.
- Tim Johnson, UWEN Chair, has been on to site to set up the TrapNZ trapline, look at the rohe and has connected with Pest Management lead Sophie Haine regarding current and future trapping requirements from Sophie’s perspective. Sophie and Matthew Lee continue to spend several hours each week walking the trap line, monitoring traps, baiting and reporting findings each month. Thank you, you are genuinely our restoration heroes! The team is gearing up, with support from Les Wootton, Dan and Tim to participate in the November pest count that occurs across the rohe. As water quality improves over time (our primary objective), aquatic life will return to the area. Ensuring best practice pest management is in place will help aquatic life to re-establish itself and increase survival. In the meantime, the pest management teams efforts on the ground are pivotal to ensuring that fauna and flora within Rosedale Park can survive.
- Peter Felsted and Lavender Feng continue to test freshwater quality in the stream. We are indebted to this team for their work. The reason for the restoration action is to increase the water quality of Alexander Stream It is a decade-long calling and hard work to keep going when not much changes year on year until eventually we get the gains we are all looking for: increased biodiversity.
- The Massey University research team continue to work weekly gathering qualitative material for the documentary on the social value chain of the project. Cadey Korson and Natalie Matthews have spent hours photographing people and place, filming work, interviewing and collecting artwork and feedback from Montessori and WVSS. Untold thanks to this special team- read more here! The knowledge they generate from their analysis will be insightful and we hope it will help us understand what is important to people and organisations as they work together on a project like this to mitigate climate change.
- The communications team continue to produce stunning collateral and quality content for us to keep stakeholders informed. Sheryl is producing quarterly updates as well as working hard to capture all the value streams across the project. You will note new stories coming online weekly at the moment as we celebrate the people working behind the scenes, ensuring successful data collection, ensuring transparency with results. We recognise that we need invest time in ensuring Pasifika peoples are informed about the project and are included in ongoing development and the outcomes should they wish to be. Sheryl has worked towards identifying Pasifika organisations we could reach out to and we have connected in with Saia Latu (Trow Group) and have scheduled to meet Ola Ioane, Diversity Works New Zealand to learn more about what we need to do to increase our engagement and build relationships going forward. We are working on developing Pasifika connections to seek guidance and encourage engagement. At the culmination of this 5-year pilot, we will have been able to consistently share our journey through Sam, Ashley, James and Sheryl’s images, storytelling, as well as moving to produce educational content about the project’s processes. Their work, including Ashley’s translation of Te Hōnonga a Iwi events into Mandarin is really appreciated by us all. Thank you!
- We have another new business partner! Peter from local company Gurit (wind energy), will be working on site to help carefully weed the site without damaging the cover crop on from 2pm to 4pm on December 5 to celebrate International Volunteer Day! We look forward to welcoming the team from Gurit along.
- Matt Cummings, the biological regeneration guru from Untangled Landscapes, is pleased with the progress of the natives and the cover crops. He, Tony, Bryce Collings and Steve Scott have spent time over the last two weekends getting the recycled water piped into the reactors. The next step is to plumb in the IBC rainwater roof collect into a holding tank and pump fresh water up to the IBC platform. The Windmill team from ASHS may be able to help us with powering that process with renewable energy rather than depend on fossil fuels. Gurit engineers have kindly offered to support the ASHS team in some way to help them realise their vision. This is another fine example of stakeholders working in unity to drive down local carbon emissions. With only 1% of global water accessible to humanity, water conservation is a big piece for the world going forward. Having Watercare and Ventia’s support to use recycled water free of charge to top up our freshwater roof collect as we need to offer huge value to Te Hōno as we work towards providing the best possible conditions to keep the bio-organisms in the reactors alive as we head into Summer.
- Another significant freshwater piece is developing. Stakeholders from across Albany/Oteha have connected with a vision to offer a community-wide response to monitoring freshwater in the rohe. Stakeholders have their first meeting on 1 November at NHHA, 9-10 am. All stakeholders are welcome to join if you are interested in shifting towards a more integrated approach to testing water in the basin.
- UWEN connections continue with a focus on developing a submission for Rosedale Park for the Auckland Council Local Parks Plan with support from Nicholas Mayne
- James Gow continues to achieve Bird Counts on behalf of Te Hōnonga a Iwi. This work is very important at this stage of the project when we have a known population of cats moved in over the pandemic and local businesses noticing a decline in the bird population combined with the removal of weeds on site presumably disturbing the local bird life. Huge thanks for sharing your expertise, James.
- EKOS has been paid for the Carbon Emissions analysis (thank you NEDF) and been contacted again to begin work on that piece asap.
- The Te Hōno database is up to date with 130 contacts for organisations or individual contributors.
- An extensive literature search on sustainability and climate change was undertaken ahead of the October Integrated Value Report (IVR) meeting. For restoration members with access to the Teams resources, the outputs related to this work in this space is stored under two channels: Resources and Data Collection, in a folder entitled Integrated Value Report. Anyone else who would like access to this information can email hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz
- Warwick Stent, Amanda Green, Amelia Sangster, Sarah Hoessler and Nicky Shave met to process planning for IVR. We confirmed that NHHA will be taking responsibility to deliver the integrated report (instead of its normal annual financial report). The report will be released in May 2023. Work is underway now to develop stakeholder surveys to prioritise metrics Te Hōnonga a Iwi members feel must be included in the materiality matrix. Additional data will be collected to measure social and business connectivity and happiness in relation to the project work. Other social, financial, and ecological metrics will be collected and analysed. One metric that can be shared now is that 1848 volunteer hours have been invested in the project across the year to date (46.2 hours per week). A remarkable investment.
- Ceinwen Evans, Youth Leader Plant Survival and Growth has joined the team from Rangitoto College. Welcome aboard Ceinwen. Thank you for agreeing to do this important mahi using Tane’s Tree App as a data collection method. We look forward to supporting you!
- Volunteer hours have been assessed and completed to October 2022.
- A project challenges document has been developed. We would love to add your insights and thoughts regarding the challenges we have faced throughout the project onto that document – send them to hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz . We will be using the feedback to consider how we could have improved or can improve going forward. Thank you in advance for that input, we seek to improve and value your insights.
- Thank you all for your continued investment in Te Hōnonga a Iwi. If you need a reminder of why we have united in investing in a regenerative project to mitigate climate change take a look at this piece on the UN website!
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