Creating sustainable models for food resilience and access to nature

“I feel like I picked up a different child today. Never in any of my kids’ schooling has a pickup been like this. My child was absolutely beaming… so eager to tell me everything they did.”

- a parent with a child enrolled in our Nurture School.

“[T]he larger vision leverages the extraordinary groundwork and collective effort already invested to date by our community groups and landowners in the area, and in time it will drive protection and restoration of some of Aotearoa’s most threatened species, ecosystems and taonga.”

- KNECT Trustee Di Rossiter on our Kukuwai Reserve Ecological Restoration project

KNECT is a grass-roots collective designed to support unique environmental and projects with sustainable outcomes for our community.

We are on the edge of Te Wai Pounamu (the South Island of New Zealand), in the town of Kawatiri Westport. We are surrounded by mountains, ocean, river and native forest. Historically a coal mining town, the coal mines still play a big part in our economy but industry in our part of the world is up and down. The one thing the locals have in common is we love our little corner of rainforest paradise.

Mission:

Our main projects are centred around food resilience, education, and getting people of all ages and ability into nature. Simply: we want to support our environment, economy and community.

KNECT started in 2022, and is funded by community, and grants, as well as a small income stream from Nurture School.

Problems:

Our main town, Kawatiri Westport, has been hit with industry closures, flooding, and environmental challenges. In the past two months we have lost more than 120 jobs across two major industries. In 2021 we had flooding that impacted more than a third of housing stock in the town. The town currently relies on coal mining for its ongoing existence. We are on a knife’s edge here. Money and opportunity can feel as distant as the rest of the world.

Resilience and Sustainability:

People don’t live here unless they love it. We are isolated, and we have a unique slice of nature. We get a lot of rain, a lot of sun, and we have a lot of untouched wilderness. There are opportunities to regenerate forest, educate our people and build sustainable business. There are opportunities to give people access to some of the most untouched nature and wildlife and to have them engage with it on meaningful levels. We are providing those for all generations in our community.

KNECT was founded in the intersection between science, environment and business. We currently have seven projects in varying places of funding and completion. The main four are:

The Nurture School

The Nurture School grew from a belief that meaningful connection is the foundation for great education and has been supported by KNECT through governance, project support, fundraising and shared community wellbeing goals.

Grounded in the Buller landscape, The Nurture School draws on international best-practice to provide nature-based learning experiences that encourage curiosity, critical thinking, resilience and environmental stewardship.

KNECT’s ecological expertise help strengthen the programme’s environmental learning, connecting students with real-world science, restoration and biodiversity initiatives within the wider Buller landscape.

Over the past two years, the programme has had a strongly positive impact for many attending children and whānau, reflected in feedback from parents and caregivers.

“I feel like I picked up a different child today. Never in any of my kids’ schooling has a pickup been like this. My child was absolutely beaming… so eager to tell me everything they did.”

The Nurture School demonstrates how community-led education initiatives can strengthen wellbeing, deepen connection to the natural environment and support the development of future guardians of te taiao.

Founder, Head Teacher and KNECT Trustee Pat Griffin says:

“I’m committed to working alongside whānau, rangatahi and communities to co-create an education system that honours every learner, strengthens communities and empowers the next generation to build a just, sustainable and compassionate Aotearoa.”

Kūkūwai Reserve Ecological Restoration

As a flagship project, KNECT and project partner Kawatiri Coastal Trail together have led the restoration of 4ha of Kūkūwai Scenic Reserve, a remnant kahikatea forest and saltmarsh ecosystem within the Buller River delta.

Working alongside schools, community groups, landowners, partner organisations and individuals, the project has already seen more than 15,000 native seedlings planted and maintained alongside the Kawatiri Coastal Trail since 2023.

What began as community planting of a degraded wetland previously used for rough grazing has now grown into a much larger, broader and nationally significant vision across a 14,000-hectare landscape: Kawatiri ki Tōtara – Community in Nature, spanning between the Buller Kawatiri and Tōtara River.

The landscape supports 16 of Aotearoa’s most threatened species and ecosystems across remnant habitats woven through productive land and settlements — an increasingly rare situation in New Zealand. Through coordinated restoration, predator control and improved habitat connectivity, the project aims to help halt species decline and support breeding populations of species such as great spotted kiwi and Australasian bittern, while strengthening the relationship between community and nature across the wider region.

Since 2020, community groups and landowners have collectively contributed more than $1.2 million in voluntary investment, including restoration planting, predator control, ecological monitoring, fencing, weed and wasp control, and habitat protection works. The initiative now includes more than 1,000 rat and stoat traps and 20 feral cat cages, over 25,000 native plants and almost 4.5km of fencing protecting forests and wetlands.

The progress to date demonstrates the power of coordinated, community-led environmental restoration at scale, bringing together ecological restoration, community leadership and Te Ao Māori perspectives to support long-term environmental resilience.

Tramping (Hiking) Huts for Young Families

One of KNECT’s desires is to create opportunities for our people to easily connect with nature in meaningful ways. One of the big gaps for our community, both here in Buller Kawatiri and nationally, is tramping huts that are designed with young families in mind that are close enough to road ends to be achievable for the masses and that cater for small kids who won’t necessarily want to be quiet for an entire night. A quick discussion with the team at Gentle Annie Camp Ground about whether the hut could be situated on their land was had, and so the seed started to sprout. Further soil was added to the idea when we met architect Mike Tait-Davis on the Paparoa Track and convinced him to get involved.

After a year or so of throwing ideas around we are close to having the plan in place and will soon be starting the not insignificant task of raising the necessary funds for the build.

Local Food Resilience

Sparked by community concern around food security and guided by science and systems thinking, KNECT’s Local Food Project responds to a significant challenge: currently, 99.7% of Buller’s food supply is imported into the geographically isolated district. Over the past three years, KNECT has worked alongside community members, stakeholders and national food system specialists to build a shared vision connecting local food production with improved community wellbeing, economic resilience, environmental health and long-term food security.

A key concept currently being developed by KNECT is a Food Resilience Hub designed to help activate both local food demand as well as supply. This is a social enterprise model to support local food production, processing, education and distribution from a shared site. KNECT trustee Di Rossiter says “our ultimate long-term goal is to help transform Buller’s food system into one that nourishes people, strengthens the local economy and increases resilience for future generations.”

How we would use funding

Quite simply: we pour any money and resources we get back into the environment, and to encourage and enable access for everyone to enjoy it. For example, we are about to launch a Cycling Without Age initiative to enable our ageing population access to these incredible projects we are completing.

We are also working on new pest management and elimination strategies to help our wonderful wildlife (including populations of the iconic Kiwi scattered around our landscape).

It doesn’t just stop with what we’ve done. It is a vision for sustainability for our future. We have the data on our food resilience, and where it needs to go. We are seeing real world impacts in the smiling faces of students learning about the outdoors for the first time, and we see the return of wildlife to our town. Not too many places in the world will you can surf, see a penguin, hear kiwi, and climb a snow capped mountain. Here you can do it all on the same day.

KNECT has the experience, the track record, and the vision to ensure we protect what we have, and grow what we don’t.