buried the hatchet for the sake of Motutapu
Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf has become a test case for how iwi, the Department of Conservation and community groups can work together. But as Tony Wall and Maxine Jacobs report, it hasn’t been easy.
Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.
In February 2020, James Brown, then-chairman of the Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki iwi, wrote an angry letter to Department of Conservation staff and members of the Motutapu Restoration Trust (MRT).
His beef was with the trust, established in 1993 with the aim of restoring the island’s ecology to support threatened species.
With former Auckland mayor Christine Fletcher as its founding trustee, volunteers had planted more than 500,000 native trees across about 100 hectares of the 1500ha island in the Hauraki Gulf, fundraising millions of dollars.
Link to video and article: How iwi, DOC and a community trust buried the hatchet for the sake of Motutapu | Stuff.co.nz
