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Environmental Action in the Community

This award recognises groups that are working collaboratively within their community to enhance Southland’s environment. Judges are looking for enduring or completed projects that have clear aims and successes. Groups, societies, not-for-profit organisations, youth movements and service clubs are all eligible for this category.

Sponsored by WM Environmental

The Otatara Landcare Group is a more than 200-strong community group overseeing great environmental work in New River Estuary, Sandy Point and Oreti Beach.

Advocating for the preservation and enhancement of forest remnants and other natural values of the Otatara area, the group promotes increased use of native plants, while also improving habitat for local native wildlife.

The group also runs activities to improve knowledge of the local environment, hosts working bees, and promotes Otatara’s natural areas to locals and visitors.

The landcare group acts as a forum for Otatara landowners to liaise with agencies on issues of land use and management of natural resources.

The group fosters strong relationships with Otatara residents and landowners on how best to manage and enhance natural areas, including weed and pest management.

The group’s total volunteer effort has exceeded 15,000 volunteer hours and more than 30,000 locally grown native plants had been planted at Bushy Point.

The Makarewa Headwaters Catchment Group has pests in their sights as they aim to restore and enhance water quality and biodiversity in their region.

Feral wild pigs and deer are causing significant damage and preventing the regeneration of native plant species in surrounding bush, causing erosion issues impacting water quality and farm production.

The catchment group are tackling the issue head-on through the Makarewa Headwaters Revival Project.
The project began with extensive surveying of the region and farmers in the catchment, to fully identify the size and scale of impacts caused by the pest animals.

That work produced an extensive database to allow the group to move forward with phase two of the project, which aims to reduce the impacts on the catchment.

As well as engaging strongly with the surrounding community of landowners, the group are working with hunters and industry organisations.

Russel and Teresa Trow have been working to restore Kundy Island, off the south-west coast of Rakiura Stewart Island, through the removal of predators and the reintroduction of locally extinct taonga species since the 1980s.

During the past 30 years Kundy Island has been a key source island for introducing tīeke to other islands - both Tītī Islands and DOC-managed islands.

This includes Ulva Island, one of the few places where the public can readily see them, and to islands in Fiordland.

The Trows have been instrumental in this having developed a high level of bird catching and handling skills..

The Trows have given decades of unwavering commitment to restoring native biodiversity on their whanau’s mutton birding manu - Kundy Island.

Many other islands both around Rakiura and in Fiordland have also benefitted from Kundy’s biodiversity restoration successes.

When the Trow’s first began this work, their first task was allowing the introduction of tīeke.
This was followed by removing weka which allowed the tīeke to flourish, making Kundy a key source island for many transfers in the future

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