We’re thrilled to bring you the second edition of Connecting Conservation, a newsletter from the Horizons Biodiversity Community Team.

Our goal is simple: to connect and support the incredible individuals and groups working on indigenous biodiversity projects throughout the Horizons region.

Here you will find

🧭 Inspiring stories from the field

🛠️ Practical resources to support your mahi

📅 Upcoming events to get involved in

💰 Funding opportunities currently open for applications

But most importantly, we want this newsletter to reflect the work you do. If you’ve got a story, a tip, or a trick to share, send it our way. Your input helps strengthen connections and inspire others across the region who are committed to conservation.

Sian, Tyler, Martin & Christina

P.S Our next edition will be in November. If you have something you want to share, send an email no later than Monday 4 November 2025.

FEATURE STORIES

Te Mata o te Whenua

Ngā mihi o te wā o Matariki

He mihi maioha ki a koutouneki mō tō koutouneki koha mō tēneki mahi hāpaitia i te Whenua kia pakari ai tō tātouneki Taiao, ki ngā taonga taketake katoa o tēneki wahi. We are truly grateful to receive the Kanorau Koiora Taketake Grant, it has given us a huge start to building our foundation of restoring our whenua with our indigenous treasures.

We are along the Ōroua River in the Manawatū, south of Feilding township. We have just completed our second year of the Kanorau Koiora Taketake Grant. It has been absolutely amazing, the amount of diverse rākau, safety & maintenance equipment and mahi we have been able to do with this funding.

It has given us a very strong base as we begin to help restore our whenua including our waterways and reporepo. It has been an uplifting and healing experience to connect with each other and the whenua. We continue to share precious memories, matauranga and pūrakau with our whānau, hapū and iwi. We have been able to practice our sacred traditional ceremonies. Many whānau who have never been on the whenua before, have expressed their gratitude as they know their tūpuna spent a lot of time on this whenua, in this area and along the awa.

Planting days have been an awesome way to catch up with whānau when they are back visiting from overseas and around the motu sharing matariki, birthday’s and tangihanga by giving back to papatūānuku.

Having the necessary equipment to help maintain and care for our rākau has been a huge relief and a vital part to ensure the rākau have the best possible chance to growing big and strong into the future.

Kanorau Koiora Taketake Grants in Action 

Horizons’ Kanorau Koiora Taketake – Indigenous Biodiversity Community Grants continue to empower local groups across our region to restore and protect the unique ecosystems that make our environment thrive.

This annual contestable fund provides both financial support, and expert advice to community-led initiatives focused on enhancing indigenous biodiversity. From wetland restoration and pest control to species monitoring and habitat protection, these projects reflect the passion and dedication of people working to reconnect with the land.

34 groups have now wrapped up their projects from last year's round of funding. Projects ranged from small-scale efforts like species photo data collection to large scale trapping programmes and wetland restoration. Each project plays a vital role in building a healthier environment for future generations.

You can read all about these inspiring projects from the past 12 months here.

Whether launching new initiatives or building on existing ones, these groups are continuing the momentum to protect and enhance our indigenous biodiversity. This year, we’re excited to support another 32 successful projects across the region, you can find out more about them here.

Together, we’re growing a region where biodiversity flourishes and communities thrive.

 The Great Matuku Muster 2025

Matuku- hureo / australasian bittern are critically endangered, with less than 1000 individuals estimated remaining across Aotearoa.

They are highly mobile, flying across large distances between wetlands so there is a bit of uncertainty as to how many individuals there are. One bird could travel between wetlands and be counted multiple times, making it hard to estimate population size.

That’s where The Great Matuku Muster comes in – a national effort across Aotearoa to monitor wetlands for matuku-hurepo at the same time.

Matuku-hūrepo prefer large wetlands but also like to hang out in smaller ones. They particularly like wetlands with dense raupō or reed cover over shallow water, generally with areas of permanent open water.

During the months of September-November male matuku-hūrepo are getting ready for breeding and are more vocal. Males produce loud ‘booms’ to help attract females, which are easier to detect.

Do you have a wetland that might be home to matuku-hūrepo / bittern?

You can help us monitor them, all you need to do is rug up, head out to your local wetland and listen for 60 -90 minutes after your local sunset.  

2025 Monitoring dates are:

 📅September 5-7^th

📅October 3-5^th

📅 November 7-9^th

If you’d like to be involved, monitoring across all three monitoring dates will increase the chance of detecting these mobile birds. Otherwise, if you can’t get out every time a single monitoring date is still really valuable.

For more information head here 

The Matatū Conservation Story

Kia ora, ko Scotty Moore ahau, I’m the volunteer Track and Trap Coordinator for Matatū, a recipient of the Horizons Kanorau Koiora Taketake - Indigenous Biodiversity Communty Grant for the past three years.

Matatū is a 230ha property 20km’s north of Whanganui in the Kauarapaoa Valley, about 30 minutes' drive from the beginning of Papaiti Rd in the Whanganui suburb of Aramoho.

Matatū was purchased by Peter and Ella Grant as a conservation project in the early 1990’s, and they spent many weekends exploring the property with their two daughters. In 1995 they had a Department of Conservation Covenant placed on the block, protecting it from development in perpetuity.

A report from the time described Matatū’s landscape in vivid detail, and spoke of steep, narrow ridges cloaked in dense bush, plunging into valleys carved by deep gorges. The hillsides were alive with regenerating rewarewa, lancewood, and tree ferns with emergent tree canopy species and beech -podocarp-broadleaf-forest including the dominant tawa, scattered hinau and a mixture of rimu, miro, mataī, tōtara and kahikatea. The report goes on to say, “the communities described were once common in the Ecological District, and some still are, but the range of habitats such as found here are rare.

With funding provided in 2021, I was able to install three Auto Trap NZ AT220 traps, and make improvement to existing tracks, as well as establishing new ones to create a loop track. Over the next two years with additional funding from the Kanorau Koiora Taketake - Indigenous Biodiversity Community Grant we grew the trap programme with a further six AT220 traps, tracking tunnels and track building tools, and I began collecting data including 5-minute bird counts at each trap location.

Improving the tracks not only made it easier to get around the traps, but it has also supported a more diverse range of visitors to Matatū, ranging from 5-year-olds from Forest & Birds’ Kids Conservation Club (KCC) to church groups, Tarapurihi Bushy Park volunteers, intermediate school students and the local tramping club.

In May 2025 Horizons conducted a kiwi survey, deploying five acoustic recorders across the entire block for approximately 14 days. The results were out of 400 monitoring hours, 350 calls were heard, consisting of 269 male and 76 female calls. 34 duets heard from three different locations in one night, indicating at least three pairs during this time.

Following these exciting results, the Grant family applied and were successful in the recent funding round. This will help them to deploy 40 traps across the entire 230ha block, a significant increase in protection for kiwi and other native manu.

With the expansive of this project, it will also mean building a new team of volunteers to deploy, maintain and monitor the traps, make track improvements, monitor biodiversity and work to control gorse on the regenerating ridges and spurs. A day to show interested volunteers is planned for late August and the deployment of traps late September all going well.

If you or anyone you know is interested in being a part of continuing and enhancing the protection of biodiversity at Matatū, you can get in touch with Scotty here

TRAP.NZ - Empowering Predator Control 

Trap.NZ is a free-to-use web and mobile app-based software system used nationally for data management activities associated with predator control.

Its broad goal is to support the vision for a predator-free New Zealand by 2050, by improving the delivery of effective and coordinated predator control, reducing the cost to organisations, and encouraging public participation in predator and pest animal control.

Data collected within Trap.NZ is private to individual project groups, however, groups can choose to (and are encouraged to) share data at a summary level which can be used nationally for research purposes and can help local volunteers find other groups working in their area. Building stronger networks and having more impactful conservation outcomes overall.

📱 Accessing Trap.NZ

• Web version: Visit trap.nz in your browser for full functionality.

• Mobile app: Download from your device’s app store. To get started, simply create a Trap.NZ account. 

The web version has the full suite of functions, while the mobile app offers streamlined features. The mobile app is a great tool to be able to able to enter in trapping results while walking along your trapline. Even in areas without cell coverage, the app stores your data offline and syncs it automatically once you're back online using the web-based version.

Trap.NZ has multiple user manuals, ranging from step-by-step instructions on the basics to using the software, to more advance user guides taking you through how you can use Trap.NZ to generate reports, statistics, graphs, and maps to show others what work is being done in your project.

📍All these guides can be found at https://help.trap.nz/

Need more help?

Trap.NZ also has a YouTube channel where the videos show you how to use both the online and mobile app from installing new traps to recording your catches.

Exciting developments are underway, including a new design tool for planning trap, bait, and monitoring lines across landscapes. Features like landowner sign-off and health and safety integration are also in the pipeline, making Trap.NZ an even more powerful ally in the fight against invasive species.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

This is a selection of funding that is currently open for applications. You will need to read through each one to understand the application process & criteria and make sure to answer the questions with the specific information they need to assess your application.

ALL YEAR FUNDERS

This is a selection of funding that is available to apply for all year round, you will need to to read through each one to understand the application process & criteria and make sure to answer the questions with the specific information they need to assess your application.

Mātauranga Kura Taiao Fund - For whānau, hapū and iwi to preserve traditional Māori knowledge and its practical use in the management of indigenous biodiversity.

Ngā Whenua Rāhui - For protection of the natural integrity of Māori land and preserve mātauranga Māori.

ENM Environmental Initiatives Fund - For small grants less than $1000 For Palmerston North city only for biodiversity protection and enhancement

Whanganui Community Foundation

Four Regions Trust - For Whanganui, Rangitieki and Ruapehu only no specific fund categories

Pub Charity - For providing some enduring or demonstrable community benefit

The Lion Foundation 

EVENTS 

FUNDING EXPO

Whanganui 

The Whanganui Funding Expo fosters connections between funders, government agencies and fund seekers to support an informed and resilient community. The event offers a chance for groups to speak with funders one-on-one and a platform for our funders to be visible and connect meaningfully with our community.

📆 Wednesday 15 October

🕧2pm to 7pm

Venue: Whanganui War Memorial Centre

RESOURCES 

This section is for sharing some great web links to information, consumables or equipment that you may have to share or you may have a question that would be worth asking others. Send us an email with any of this information and we can share it here.

Environment Network Manawatū Calendar 

Predator Free New Zealand 

Manawatū Estuary Dune Garden - It's an easily accessed ephemeral dune wetland area within the Ramsar site, with rare and endangered plant and invertebrate species.

Arnim Littek is a regular visitor with many observations of activity at this site.  If you would like to know more or receive his regular updates email him here.

Manawatū Estuary Information and Advice - Every week day morning EXCEPT Tuesdays, 9am to 12 noon at the Senior Citizens Hall, 207 Seabury Ave, Foxton Beach

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED 

JOIN THE TRIBE | Tōtara Reserve Indigenous Biodiversity Enhancement

The second Tuesday of every month between 10am -2pm at the reserve.

We will meet you at the Kererū Campground office block for a 10am start for the health and safety briefing, and then you can participate for as long as you can up to 2pm

We will be doing a variety of different tasks during the year so keep an eye on our events tab for full details and any updates to meeting locations.

All essential equipment required will be supplied, including gloves and Hi-vis vests, so you just need to dress appropriately to keep warm, dry and protected from the sun and bring some sunscreen, water and lunch.

If you have any questions please about volunteering at Tōtara Reserve please email us on here

Need help with something??

email us on BiodiversityCommunityTeam@horizons.govt.nz