Our Mission

Our mission is to encourage local school students and communities to embrace the need to protect and restore their waterways and native flora and fauna in the hope that our stories and results can be viewed as a role model and guide for other rural communities across New Zealand; protecting, restoring and nourishing the return of healthy ecosystems for future generations, including the return of native birdlife along river corridors from the mountains to the sea.

Our aim is to work with students, teachers, landowners, conservation groups, and local government to address and promote the need to halt and reverse the decline of natural wilderness and wetlands within the Wairarapa; to encourage the protection and return of birdlife and endangered fauna and flora, and help reverse the effects of climate change.

Our mission starts with our Schools Behind Our River project to deliver hands-on learning opportunities for school students to embrace environmental conservation projects that connect local communities with the health of their river catchment, Maori heritage, and sustainable biodiversity goals.

Our Values

We believe in doing good, being kind, and selflessly contributing towards the future wellbeing and health of our children, country, and our planet.

We encourage debate and awareness of environmental issues, sharing the work of like-minded individuals in other organizations or charity groups, and where possible extending our support towards their needs.

We embrace new technologies that aim to aid and assist sustainable methods of working with land and wildlife rejuvenation projects; supporting and mentoring local technology start-ups that aim to use new technologies for the purpose of restoring and protecting our ecosystems.

We encourage an understanding of our natural treasures (taonga) through the values, knowledge, and traditions of the Māori culture and local iwi; with the aim to communicate and share these stories as a means to encourage students and local communities to show respect for the land, natural waterways and surrounding ocean by restoring healthy relationships between places and people.

We recognize that our work as local stewards and guardians is to encourage charitable conservation and environmentalism philanthropy – inviting investment, scientific, educational, and technical expertise that in turn helps saves threatened sites and ensures the survival of endangered native species, including our local environments from risks associated with any further rise in global temperatures.