An iwi-led pest eradication programme on Aotea Great Barrier Island is bringing environmental gains, encouraging mana whenua to return home and delivering wider benefits.
The woman driving a flat-bottom boat across Māhuki Bay in the outer Hauraki Gulf is a study in concentration. She moors alongside another vessel, expertly launches a kayak into the clear water and gently paddles ashore.
Makere Jenner's journey to work is no ordinary commute. Her home is on Rangiāhua Island, part of the Broken or Pig Islands chain off the west coast of Aotea Great Barrier Island.
Today she's checking progress on a trapping project under way on Māhuki Island, part of her remit as project lead for Tū Mai Taonga, a Māori-led conservation programme based on Aotea, which is a short boat ride from Jenner's home. Tū Mai Taonga operates under the Predator Free 2050 umbrella; the ambitious, nationwide programme that aims to rid Aotearoa of invasive species so native wildlife can flourish.
With a war chest including $7 million in central government Predator Free funding, $2m from Auckland Council and $2.6m from community funding agency Foundation North, Tū Mai Taonga is not a cheap endeavour. But the project goes beyond financing rewilding and tackling a feral cat and rat invasion. It is providing jobs so islanders can return home, training them to do conservation work and giving them an opportunity to participate in a resurgence of Māori culture and language, which were perilously close to being lost there. After-work te reo Māori classes are well-attended and centuries-old craft skills are being passed from kaumātua to mokopuna.
It's all part of an unwavering commitment for this project to catalyse a wider, largely volunteer, community effort to restore land, culture and te reo.
For Jenner, 39, and other recruits, this is a race against time in the face of devastation by pests and climate change.
Tū Mai Taonga was born in 2021 after the Ardern government launched the Jobs For Nature programme during Covid. Local iwi Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea led the project alongside Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust, Auckland Council, the Department of Conservation, other conservation groups and private landowners. It has become one of the island's larger employers with a team of about 35.
For the environmental trust, which had been working on pest eradication and restoring biodiversity for 20 years on the island, it was a chance to turbo boost its work, and it wanted iwi to lead.
Trust chair Kate Waterhouse, who's on Tū Mai Taonga's steering committee, says things have ramped up as funding agencies' recognition of the biodiversity value of Aotea increased. "So we've had more support for conservation on private land and for vulnerable species."
With the iwi's leadership, the project has helped build both employment and social momentum as landowners joined in.
At 285 sq km, Great Barrier is about three times the size of Waiheke Island but considerably further from the mainland. Although it has rats and cats it's never been colonised by stoats or possums.
Tū Mai Taonga (translation: standing up for precious treasures) aims to eradicate rodents and feral cats to protect Aotea's existing population of pāteke, tākotekai/black petrels, chevron skinks, banded rails, kākā, dotterels and wetland birds. The hope is this will lead to the return of kōkako, korimako/bellbirds, tīeke/saddlebacks and more.
Jenner's own story is part of that regeneration: she grew up in Huntly, but her mother hails from Aotea and she visited every summer as a child. After health science and Māori studies at the University at Otago, she ran a healthcare business in Canada with her husband Matthew - until cancer made her re-evaluate her life.
"Once I got the all-clear my husband and I decided to move to Aotea, which was always part of our retirement plan as we felt really drawn back to the island. When I had cancer I thought I might not get a retirement so the thinking was, 'Make sure you do what you really want to, when you can.'
"This is our ancestral homeland and I felt like I needed to be here, to be ahi kā - to keep the home fires burning.
Moving four children to a remote island gave her pause, but not for long. "I really worried the kids would have a hard time adapting but that was a piece of cake. I worried that we would regret moving out to the outer islands because it's another level of hard. There are some really wacky days here with no power and no water or the weather is so rough. The families here say if you can last two winters on the island you can live here."
The Tū Mai Taonga role has given Jenner even more purpose in returning. "I wanted to build up our whānau, our marae and bring back our language. I wanted to bring my grandfather's line back on the island. I wanted to be here with my feet on the ground."
She's under no illusion that the scale of the project is vast. "It's daunting at times, but this is way more than restoring habitat alone. For our people we need to begin to restore their connections to the island and that's important because we have all but lost our connection to our language, our culture, to each other and to our land.
"The project's goals are aspirational, far-fetched even. But anyone who says it can't be done is missing the point. We are trying to achieve a world first in making Aotea Great Barrier Island predator free. On an inhabited island this big it hasn't been done - yet!"
The World Bank estimates indigenous peoples manage or hold tenure rights to about a quarter of the world's surface area - accounting for a significant portion of the world's biodiversity, nearly half of Earth's protected areas and more than half of its remaining intact forests.
A 2024 World Bank study highlights the resilience of indigenous peoples, their ancestral knowledge, cultural practices and governance systems, which allow them to sustain communities and adapt to challenges such as climate change.
It's that deep pool of knowledge and respect for how their ancestors worked with, not against, nature that Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea Trust Board chair Fletcher Beazley feels is key to success for Tū Mai Taonga and why it's a model that can be adopted elsewhere, at scale.
"Our teams are applying te ao Māori principles that connect people and place to conservation and they are honouring our unique tikanga," says Beazley. "Indigenous peoples around the world have similar experiences to Māori - lack of culture, lack of land, lack of identity; so yes, sure, this could be replicated all over the place."
What the Tū Mai Taonga team is accomplishing is a green shoot in a forest of efforts urgently needed to halt species decline.
Environmental trust chair Waterhouse says "millions" of rats are suppressing biodiversity on Aotea, but many thousands are caught each year by locals, helping to maintain bird populations. The goal now is to keep maintaining those numbers "so we have time to figure out how to eradicate the rats".
There are thousands of feral cats on the island too, but that population is expected to be eradicated within five to 10 years.
The first phase of Tū Mai Taonga saw 90% of feral cats removed from the Te Paparahi region in the north of Aotea and rodents (mainly rats) from the outer Broken Islands including Māhuki. Tū Mai Taonga trappers have captured almost 300 feral cats and 4500 rats so far. It is heavy work, laying traps, cutting through bush and walking great distances across land once trodden by their ancestors. The next phase moves from the north to the centre, into more populated areas of Aotea.
Trappers must also work around wāhi tapu sites. Adviser Hiku Davis walks up to 20km a day identifying artefacts of cultural significance to his Aotea forebears. "I can tell from a series of holes on a ridge line if it's a former kūmara pit. I come across fortified pā sites, midden sites and sharp stones the ancestors used to prepare fish.
"My role is not to disturb or even document it, just to leave it all there and ensure our trappers work around those sacred sites. It means the history of our ancestors is respected and safe."
For kaumātua Opo Ngawaka - one of only three human inhabitants of remote Māhuki Island - removing predators means fruit and vegetables now grow unmolested in his backyard for the first time in living memory. It's a joy outstripped only by his pride in seeing the now rat-free tākupu/gannet colony on the island's outer cliffs flourish like it has not done in decades.
Ngawaka knows the iwi elders' long-term backing is necessary to ensure the continued success of Tū Mai Taonga. But there's nervousness over long-term funding following the government's decision in May to fold the Predator Free 2050 initiative launched in 2016 into DoC.
Broach future funding with Jenner and her jaw tightens. "We appreciate funding is tight and we are humbled by the support we have for this project. Every dollar we receive for conservation is spent on funding the restoration of nature; but our point of difference is that we carry out our mahi in a te ao Māori way that connects people to place. It means the environmental and cultural guardianship is being protected in one of the most special places in Aotearoa New Zealand."
Habitat restoration and a return to Great Barrier of native birds like the kōkako, whose call was last heard here in the mid-1990s, would have not just a positive environmental and emotional impact. Financially, it could lead to a surge in ornithological tourism - the opportunity to attract more visitors from the mainland and overseas to experience the island's picture-postcard beauty and view conservation efforts first-hand.
Ridding such a huge area of predators then benefitting from a tourism dividend is not a quick win, as one man can attest.John Barrett has dedicated his life to restoring native wildlife and flora on Kāpiti Island, north of Wellington. Through his persistence, Kāpiti is now a much-visited nature reserve and he is interested in the progress of projects such as those on Aotea.
"I think you learn to expect the unexpected," says Barrett. "You learn to live with a loss here and there because it doesn't go perfectly all the time. By and large this process has been a slow burn," he says.
Jenner agrees. "We have stood in awe of other predator-free projects that were getting it right and we've slowly built confidence as we get things right, too. Our failures along the way show that we tried. Our wins show that we don't give up.
"If we maintain the resilience that got us through the difficult start-up phase then we have a real shot at making a way for people and the taiko [environment] to thrive again on Aotea."