The Hype, The Reality

It's funny, sometimes you have to be excited about your work, a project, a new product - just to get other people excited about it and the 'outwardly facing' optimism isn't always quite akin to the 'inwardly facing' reality.

Since ISV have been here, I have been partaking in discussions and learning a little more myself. One thing really stuck in my mind, and it was one of the frameworks/models of Sustainability by which they were assessing projects by.

This is pretty much the framework they were looking at, and asking the question 'Is conservation always a good thing? And are conservation projects always sustainable?"


Dave (my boss) and I were discussing the other day how we thought this (the Punakaiki Coastal Restoration Project) is one project we have been involved in that we both felt warranted the hype starting to surround it.

When ISV started breaking the project down using this framework, they seemed to have a similar opinion.

Environment
Perhaps the easiest here - I think everyone accepts that having native bush instead of unused farmland, developed land (hotels/residential) or whatever else the land could have been used for it invariably a good thing. With the plantings come insects, native birds, seed spreading, pollenation of species, and eventually the regrowth that we're trying to speed up. It will help to protect the Petrels habitat from any kind of mining, mineral expoloration, and hopefully reduce fatalities of Petrels being 'thrown off' their final leg to their nesting sites. Environment - tick.

Economic
The long term plan (past 5 years) is currently indicating that boardwalks, walking tracks, and a viewing platform are in the offing to balance human recreation with the ongoing restoration and reclamation of the land by nature. Our thoughts are that it will give people another reason to stay in Punakaiki for that little bit longer, thus bringing a little more economic prosperity to the area (whether that be for the motel owners, the shops or cafes). The project is funded for the first 5 years by Rio Tinto, a situation that isn't too common for conservation projects. Often they are paid for out of tax payers money, or friends groups fundraising tallies, so to find initial funding streams established and guaranteed is a huge bonus. CVNZ are already working on how we can secure future funding past 5 years, and DOC will be legally tied to maintaining the reserve to a certain level. Economic - tick.

Social
This is often where a conservation project has the ability to fall over. However one great thing about my organisation (CVNZ) is the community angle they take; CVNZ actively recruits and maintains volunteers from both the local and global community to engage them in the projects we are involved in. In this case, we have recently held a community planting day, in which around 30 or so people from the local community came to volunteer with an ISV team for a day on the site to join local and global community as one and get people linked into this project early. We view it as incredibly important to have the local community's backing and support, and the fact that people from around the world are coming to spend a week or two in Punakaiki to live and volunteer and be involved in a project like this is fantastic as it spreads word around the globe, features in blogs, and gets people engaged. Social - check.


So I guess I'm kind of proud of the project I'm now involved in. I was saying to a colleague last night (whilst at an Environmental Short Film night hosted by DOC in Grymouth) that it is such a fantastic opportunity for all of us permanently involved in the project too - each of us gets to make our own little mark on the project and take a lot of pride in that as this project grows up.

Without Dave, this project wouldn't have got started, wouldn't have had CVNZ's backing, wouldn't have been planned or implemented properly.

Without James, the long term future, logistics and quality of the project's outcomes wouldn't be met - the plants wouldn't arrive, or wouldn't be the right type for example.

Without myself, the on-ground activities wouldn't be explained or carried out, the health & safety levels wouldn't be maintained, the volunteers wouldn't know how to go about the tasks, and actually, the volunteers wouldn't even be able to get here.

The more I look at the project, the longer I spend here, the harder it would be to leave before it is completed, and I know for sure that I will always have a connection to this place and the forest that (hopefully) shall return to the area because of each and every person that is involved permanently or that steps onto this site and volunteers.