Monica Peters took the Kiwi Coast to America last week when she presented the initiative to the Citizen Science Conference in Minnesota. Monica explains her interest in showcasing Kiwi Coast to an American audience and some of the more unusual responses she encountered…
Article by Monica Peters.
Why take Kiwi Coast to America? The answer lies in the importance of stepping back for a moment to see not only how unique we are, but also what we do, and how we do it. We know the New Zealand is unique and the biota so quirky, that in our haste to colonise the landscape we have caused irrevocable change. The astonishment is obvious when you mention that prior to people arriving there were no mammals, save 3 species of miniscule bat. Mention that chunky invertebrates forage like mice – imagine whipping out a weta with that revelation! – and your audience is hooked.
New Zealand is physically remote, but also in people’s minds.
I was asked if we had crocs. Seriously. Showcasing great projects like Kiwi Coast at an international conference cements New Zealand’s place globally in the field of community-led environmental restoration.
Over the course of my PhD research I couldn’t find any other country with such a strong grass-roots restoration movement. What sets NZ apart is that on one level, each group gets on with its own project but at the same time, all groups identify with a big common goal: bring back what we have degraded or lost.
The conference in St Paul (Minnesota, May 17-20) was the second only brought together by the new US-based Citizen Science Association. Although many groups in NZ monitor aspects of their restoration projects, calling this activity ‘citizen science’ may be new to many. Or a bit weird. Or just ‘so what?’ However, it’s a term worth taking note of – it’s being used more frequently by Regional councils, DOC and government ministries in strategy/planning documents.
Community members collecting data e.g., for baseline studies, population, trend and ecosystem health monitoring is a big component of citizen science. Citizen science differs from ‘normal’ science.
Citizen science can ‘democratise’ science by giving recognition to members of the community who don’t necessarily have formal science qualifications but whose science-based studies contribute to growing knowledge about the environment.
The conference brought together community members, project coordinators, academics, social and biological scientists, tech experts and others. The array of terrestrial, celestial and aquatic projects was impressive – and kiwi were in there too.
Looking at Kiwi Coast from this setting of great doers and creative thinkers, the project has several unique features: a series of individual community, agency and business-led projects drawn together by the meta objective of kiwi recovery; the focus on restoring habitat for a threatened species at a landscape scale; and the inclusion of data collection using standardised protocols to determine kiwi population numbers and distributions.
That’s pretty unique for New Zealand as a whole too. Although Predator Free NZ 2050 has acted as a catalyst to bring groups together, Kiwi Coast has big head start and that’s worth sharing with the world.
