Our annual fundraiser, always a sell out success:

VIP Kayak Day on 18th April 2026

Once a year only – so as not to disturb the wildlife too much – and with access generously granted by our neighbouring properties, our VIP Kayak Day is back!

Experience Te Henga wetland from the best possible perspective and raise funds for its protection at the same time. The navigable part of Waitākere River is accessible only from private land. On this one day, access will be allowed for our biggest fundraiser of the year – a two hour paddle in small groups on kayaks. Drift along the Waitakere River, which flows through Matuku Link, through to Te Henga wetland.

Tickets are $80 each, with all equipment (kayaks, paddles, life vests, etc.) and training provided. Minimum age is 12 years. For enquiries about younger participants or other questions, please contact us.  Book now, last year this sold out within two weeks!

Book now!

All proceeds go directly to Matuku Link, a community conservation and education project in Bethells/Te Henga. Your support helps us restore the wetland with plants from our nursery, protect wildlife through pest control, and provide wetland education programs for local primary schools at our Sustainable Wetland Education Centre. The smell of a sausage sizzle (regular, vegan & GF) will await you when you arrive at our Sustainable Wetland Education Centre (aka “the barn”), with home baking, locally roasted coffee and cold drinks all for sale to provide you sustenance before or after your kayak tour.

Bookings required, no door sales! Last year this sold out within two weeks. Proudly part of EcoFest.

Hope to see you there! – Annalily, colleagues, trustees, volunteers – and all the birds you’ll be supporting!

All images by our voluntary professional photographer Stefan Marks – thank you!

It wouldn’t have been the same without our stall holders who engaged with our visitors with activities, information and conversation.

• the Bethells Fire Brigade,
• Christine Rose Ceramics,
• Muriwai Environment Trust (those penguins!),
• Pest Free Waitakere Ranges Alliance,
• Ark in the Park (that stuffed cat!),
• PredatorFreeSwanson/Waitekere,
• Friends of Whatipu (weekend outing coming up!),
• Frazer the Biodiversity Guy,
• Birds New Zealand,
• Te Henga Tuturiwhatu & Penguin Protectors,
• Department of Conservation (clean your boat!),
• Kauri Rescue (got any kauri for a health check?),
• Auckland Council Tiakina Kauri,
• Auckland Zoo
• Entomological Society (so many beautiful tiny creatures),
• Mountains to Sea (getting wet feet),
• EcoMatters (flower arranging with weeds!)
• Brandy Davis, who screen printed her beautiful design on our t-shirts all day long!

Join us to care for our plants with “Search and Rescue” – protect our native trees from getting smothered by weed or later in the season help to plant new trees. We’d love you to join us at Matuku Link at 111 Bethells Road. For H&S reasons: if you haven’t been before, please REGISTER here.

Our working bees are every Tuesday 9am till noon and every Third Sunday of the month:

• Sunday 15th February10 am – 1 pm
• Sunday 15th March10 am – 1 pm
• Sunday 19th April10 am – 1 pm
• Sunday 17th May 10 am – 1 pm – start planting season in earnest!
• Sunday 21th June 10 am – 1 pm
• Sunday 19th July 10 am – 1 pm
• Sunday 16th August 10 am – 1 pm
• Sunday 20th September 10 am – 1 pm.

If you’re new, we’ll take you on a guided tour around the project and you might even spot our pāteke (brown teal) or feed the huge eels. If you’re a regular, you know how satisfying and fun this is, so bring your friends! All ages welcome, especially the tamariki.

• no need to bring your own gloves and spades, but if you do: everything needs to be squeaky clean because of kauri dieback
• for the shared lunch we’ll provide soup or salad & snacks (and homemade baking if you’re lucky!) & hot drinks to share, if you can bring something to add, that’s always appreciated.

If you’d rather come during the week, we also do Tuesday Nursery & Field Days – every Tuesday from 9am till noon, with a very nice morning tea at 10.30am.

But don’t forget if you haven’t been before to register HERE.

Hope to see you there! – Annalily & the trustees

0212207136 or hello@matukulink.org.nz

Celebrate World Wetland Day with us at Matuku Link!
📅Sunday, 1st February 2026 | 10am – 3pm

Get ready for a day of discovery, excitement, and free family fun at the Wetland Day Festival 2026 at Matuku Link!

With free family activities every hour including guided tours on bugs, birds, eels, and plants, a VR kauri dieback game, and local conservation groups to chat to, you will have plenty to do all day. While you are here, look for our local pāteke (brown teal), spot a secretive spotless crake (pūweto), and keep an eye out for our cryptic namesake, the matuku-hūrepo (Australasian bittern). See how much Matuku Link has changed since its beginnings in 2016, with over eight thousand volunteer hours spent annually improving the place, building accessible boardwalks, and a Wetland Education Centre. Enjoy homemade treats, BBQ (vegan and non-vegan), drinks including fresh coffee, all available for purchase.

Stallholders in 2026 include Auckland Zoo, Birds New Zealand, Forest & Bird Waitākere, Arataki Visitor Centre, The Entomological Society, Mountains to Sea, Kauri Rescue, Auckland Council Biodiversity, Pest Free Waitākere Ranges Alliance (PFWRA), Muriwai Environment Trust and many others.

See you there for a fun filled day for the whole whanau!

Annalily & trustees Chad Wilkie, Dale Bainbridge, John Fawcett, John Staniland and John Sumich and all our volunteers.

Image: Annalily in front of the window wall made from upcycled window frames by our volunteers

Auckland Council’s Waste Minimization Fund has granted Matuku Link $4750 towards a trial for the project we’ve called “Small lids, big dents”. Recently, the rules on what you can add to your curb recycling bin have changed. Only items with a printed 1, 2 or 5 are accepted. This means the lids of tin cans and glass jars shouldn’t go into the recycling bin anymore. But what to do with those small items? Or with your toothbrush, or juice carton? This led a couple of us, including our educator Rebecca Bowater and local hub co-coordinator Tamsin Norman, to come up with this ‘collection point’.

The idea behind this project is to give people in the Waitakere River Valley an easy option to drop off their small recyclables. As there is only one way in-and-out, and Matuku Link is on that road, people will be going past on their way, which makes this an ideal “quick stop off & drop off” location. Most drop off locations for the items we propose to recycle are much further away and not worth making a special trip for (pens, lids, blister packs etc), nor do people want to save them up until they have enough to make it worthwhile.

At Matuku Link we have volunteers helping out every Tuesday, and most come from outside the Waitakere River Valley. They have offered to, once in a while when a box is full, take this box and bring it to a drop off point on their way. This means it doesn’t require extra driving or adding a carbon footprint to the recycling. We have interviewed several resource centres and their main issue is dumping of non-recyclable materials. Therefore we want our Recycle Station inside the gate, which is open during working hours and a staff member can answer questions and oversee recycling submitted. We’re also open every third Sunday of the month.

As we are an education center, we also will include information on the panels on what to do with items we do not accept: where to bring them and why.

This recycling station will be part of our regular Education Program we do with over 1500 students per year. If schools are interested and this project is successful, we can advise them how to start their own, share the design of the posters and the station.

What we’re planning to accept:

• Liquid Paperboard (akaTetra Pak)

We can easily collect liquid paperboard cartons, such as Tetra Pak. For details on the drop-off process visit https://www.saveboard.nz/drop-off-cartons  We’ll need to have information reminding people to cut, wash and dry before putting them in the bin. A volunteer would need check that they are all cut and washed, then drive these out to south Auckland.

• Plastic Lids Small Zero Waste Box 25 x 25 x 46 cm – cost is $222 per box

Lot of people are asking how to recycle plastic lids as you can no longer put them in your general recyling bin. TerraCycle have a box for plastic lids This is a paid service where we purchase boxes that have postage pre-paid. Once full we just post them at any post office. The postage does run out at some point so may need to send off even if it isn’t full yet. We would need to ensure the boxes are stored in a dry place. Might need a plastic box for outside and cardboard stored inside.  Bottle Caps – Zero Waste Box™ (terracycle.com)

• Metal Lids and Small Metal Pieces

We can recycle metal lids and small metal items through our local scrap metal yard. This option is cost-free and may even provide us with a small return. These would need to be dropped off and potently sorted.

• Power Cords and Various Cables

Although this is a viable option, I feel collecting power cords and different cables might be logistically challenging due to sorting and storage requirements. We can discuss whether to include these in our program later. Goes free of charge to the scrap metal yard.

• Blister Packs (medication) and pencils, pens, markers – Small Zero Waste Box 25 x 25 x 46 cm $216

Blister packs can be recycled through TerraCycle. Similar to general plastics (see above), we will need to purchase a postage-paid box for collection. The box has a limited usage period (either six months or a year), after which it needs to be sent back. Blister packs (terracycle.com)

• EcoStore Products:

This is an easy addition to our recycling plan. We can set up a container for EcoStore bottles. Need to check they are clean and dry before storing. Again a volunteer would need to drop them off.

• Soft plastics:

This is accepted at Woolworth/Countdown stores and is easy to collect and give to a volunteer to drop off at their local store – we have had several offers to do so already.

• Food scraps:

We have two large compost bins for our own food scraps and garden waste (not weeds!) next to our nursery. As most people in the valley will have their own composting system, we don’t think there would be much need for a food scraps collection point, but we’ll do a survey later in the project and can add it if there is a need.

We decided against batteries because of the fire risk, but will add the opportunity to drop off batteries (and light bulbs and polystyrene) at local Mitre10 and Bunnings (and some libraries). This and other opportunities for recycling will be on the information boards.

We hope this will reduce the number of small recyclable items in the general waste… we’ll evaluate after one year to see if it’s worth our, and our volunteers’ time to collect these items.

Thank you Rebecca, Tamsin and Katherine for organising this, thank you to our Build Team Volunteers who will be building the “bus shelter structure” and thank you Auckland Council for the funding!

Starting in September, The Great Matuku Muster 2024 was the first attempt to gather data nationwide on the number of male matuku-hūrepo [Australasian bittern].  Matuku are very mobile easily managing to travel several scores or hundreds of kilometres even in the breeding season so a collaborative coordinated approach over the whole country might be able to give a more accurate number of this rare and threatened bird. Three dates in September, October and November were selected according to maramatanga as being likely dates when males were  maximally booming to entice females to a site.

John Sumich, founding trustee at Matuku Link as well as at the Bittern Conservation Trust, put his hand up to organise the “West Auckland” part of the Matuku Muster, with volunteers from Matuku Link, Ark in the Park and Birds New Zealand over fourteen sites in total.

Here at Te Henga wetland we had seven sites where for one hour from sunset listeners waited to detect the booming. Seven other sites were covered by volunteers to listen from a number of locations at Whatipu wetland. Friends of Whatipu volunteers listened at Whatipu sites, “our” volunteers went to the sites at Karekare and the one in the middle was covered by three West Auckland based Auckland Council rangers who each camped one night at Ohaka Point. Thank you all!!!!

A lot of effort went in with only a few booms heard but the September date was wet, with rain at times and wind so not a great night (see the picture above). The October and November nights had calmer weather allowing three sites at te Henga to record booms while the rangers detected matuku booms on each of the 3 nights at Ohaka point. While we heard booms from 3 sites at te Henga we had also deployed automatic acoustic recorders at the same places around the wetland we have used in the past 7 years and an initial analysis of those recordings for the October evening indicated 4-5 boom sites.

When listening for booms, the time when a boom was heard, the number of booms in a row and the approximate compass bearing of the origin of the boom were all recorded. The first two items would help to determine if the same bird was being heard from more than one listening point while the compass bearing we hoped might help another aspect of the exercise. With Auckland Council having a thermal camera equipped drone they had planned to survey likely spots along the Whatipu Strand and at te Henga for matuku-hūrepo nest sites, and our listening site GPS and compass bearing data could help narrow the area to fly the drone.  There was a some initial excitement when it seemed that a matuku nest had been seen along the Whatipu Strand but on closer examination of the photographs, it was then decided that the nest with 3 chicks was that of a kahu [harrier hawk]. As a new team with new equipment it took the Auckland Council drone survey staff more time than they had  anticipated so only the Whatipu area was surveyed but hopes are high that next season both Whatipu and te Henga can be done again after active human listening as this year.

We’re also still looking for some funding for Benjamin Brooking, a professional filmer, who volunteered his time to film us at Te Henga doing our (unsuccessful) monitoring – we’d love to turn this into a short documentary about that incredible bird, the matuku-hūrepo. Interviews with experts, threats to their existence, historical stories – it would make a lovely (educational) story for a much wider audience to raise awareness. We’ll need around $6000 for editing, music, time and materials to make this happen… if you have ideas how we could raise these funds, please contact us on hello@matukulink.org.nz. 

Meanwhile we still have to wait till the results from the whole country are disseminated from DOC where all results were forwarded to be collated – stay tuned!

In other matuku-hūrepo news: several researchers are working on “Improving eDNA monitoring of Australasian Bittern: genetic sequencing of bittern and
testing methodologies in lab and field”. Download their article for BirdsNZ here.

At our upcoming World Wetland Day Festival at Matuku Link we’ll place the spotlight on this amazing wetland ninja, with talks about the matuku, unveiling of a new artwork by our very own Derek March as part of the Waitakere wide “Special Species Project”. Saturday 1st of February 2025 from 10 am till 3pm at 111 Bethells Road – all welcome. More info here.

Our Wetland Education Programme for local low decile primary schools, is a huge success with over 1500 children a year visiting Matuku Link. Our incredible educators teach them to love wetlands and appreciate the bush, nature and the natural environment while doing a full day of hands-on science. Identifying macro-invertebrates, comparing and contrasting the water from a pond and a stream, testing for water clarity and admiring the size and lifecycle of our local tuna kuwharuwharu (long finned eels). They might spot a rare pateke, or a piwakawaka will join their session on bird calls and identification. With their newly learned skills of using the binoculars, they read bird bands and discuss the use of identifying different birds.

Delivery of this programme is only possible with the funding of the Mazda Foundation (towards the wages of our educator) and many smaller funders like Auckland Council, the Waitakere Ranges Local Board and The Trusts West. In this challenging funding climate, we can’t rely on these funding streams, so we are looking for 100 people, friends of Matuku Link, to forgo one coffee a week for a year and donate that $5 per week to us. Donate here.

If this sounds like you, please consider this proposal and visit our site to donate: www.matukulink.org.nz/support-us. We’re a charitable trust so all donations over $5 are tax deductible. For questions or other options, please contact me at hello@matukulink.org.nz Or contact one of our trustees to discuss: John Sumich, John Staniland, Chad Wilkie or Dale Bainbridge.

Thank you sincerely for your support, Annalily van den Broeke – 0212207136.

Santa isn’t the only one who has helpers! We have many… last week we had our first volunteer sewing session to make beautiful, sustainable, cutlery bags from donated pieces of fabric, filled with recycled cutlery – a fork, spoon, knife and straw ready for your next picnic. Or to take to work, if you’re working somewhere like I used to do, where the spoons were always missing, and it’s pretty hard to eat soup with a fork!

It’s also a great gift idea for gluten-free or coeliac friends – bringing your own takes the possible contamination out of the equation. Not to mention the hygiene aspect, with a new wave of covid and possibly flu coming along.

They look & feel adorable, absolute eye-candy, and we guarantee they’ll make you smile every time you look at it, and remember that each cutlery bag set contributed to the restoration of another square meter of habitat for our native pāteke – how’s that for a feel-good gift??? They are $35 each, including cutlery, super limited edition, made with love!

We don’t ship them due to the high cost of postage and increased carbon footprint. You are welcome to come and pick them up from our onsite store, or if you live in Auckland, we might even deliver it on our way to visit friends.

Contact Rebecca (shop@matukulink.org.nz) for details on payment and delivery or call 0212207136 for more info.

Many of our volunteers are not just “ours” – they volunteer at other projects as well – Mototapu, Oakley Creek, Orangihina, Ark in the Park – to name just a few! And some volunteer at Birdcare Aotearoa, which is the only place in Auckland where you can drop off an injured or sick bird, or in these times: fledglings and young chicks. They do a sterling job with professional vet staff and many many volunteers – and never enough funding. Because every bird on average costs about $100 in food, time and shelter, it is in their and the bird’s benefit to get them back in nature as soon as possible. Some birds will be fine when you just open the cage and let them go. Others need a “soft release” – staying in an aviary at the site where they will be released, to find their bearings while they still get fed. After a week or so, their door will be open but food is still provided, in case they need it. Some birds just head off, others hang around the aviary for a while until they find enough food elsewhere.

Last year we had a ‘hard release’ of three banded rail (mohu pereru) see more here, which was very exciting, plus many grey ducks and even a grey teal. A trial of a ‘soft release’ was done with two matuku moana (white faced herons) which went well – they grew significantly in the week they were with us and took off confidently. Last week we’ve received another guest to our aviary, another young matuku moana which we’re feeding now. The food is a specific mix of (frozen) sprats, marinara, a mouse and a day-old chicken… which was what he received at Birdcare. After two feeds it turns out he isn’t a fan of seafood though – Marjolijn, one of our volunteers who feed him twice a day, noticed he wasn’t a seafood fan: he picked up a piece of marinara and threw it down in disgust!

Let us know if you’re interested in taking care of birds and would like to help out in one way or the other. And walk quietly near the aviary when you have a sneak peek of this very fluffy specimen…

Best, Annalily – 0212207136 or hello@matukulink.org.nz

Below some pictures of our first ‘set’ of matuku moana and some snaps of our current guest.

After two postponements due to the weather, we finally were able to unveil the mural amidst many of Dereks’ friends, family and Matuku Link supporters. It even stopped raining during the speeches, and on Sunday afternoon the sun came out. A beautiful  full colour design on A3 by John Ringer gives some more info on the individual details of the artwork, called “Tuna heke – the migration of eels”, a journey to the sea from the the headwaters in the misty rainforest down through the land to the coast. The eels have been a consistent presence in the river, witnessing changes brought by humans through the currents of time, depicted here on the mural.

The eel was also the inspiration for Jenny MacDonald’s pebble artwork, installed last year but never officially unveiled due to Covid restrictions. The third artwork “opened” was our Window Wall – made from recycled, donated window frames by a team of dedicated volunteers Gary, Russell and Lew. They cleaned, scraped, sanded, primed, re-glazed and repainted all the frames to turn them into this funky upcycled wall to keep the outside area of the barn dry and ready for our Wetland Education participants. John Staniland, our MC for the night “opened” the Window Wall by “closing” it with a small yellow block naming the three men who made this happen.

Others celebrated were John Ringer for all his time donated as a graphic designer, Mark Bellingham as our wetland specialist and TDR expert, John Sumich – founding trustee – for his energy and vision, Chad Wilkie – chair of the trust, Dale Bainbridge – trustee and master builder and architect.

The weekend was a huge success and fulfills the last one of the four aims of our project – restoration, protection, education and inspiration – which we can focus on now we’ve got the first three items up and running!

Thank you for all of you who brought a plate to the party, who supported Derek while making his artwork or afterwards by visiting, having a chat or buying his works, for giving guided tours or supporting us with your purchases from our shop. But of course our main thanks goes to Derek – whos hundreds of hours of work created the mural, the heart of the pARTy.

Hope to see you again in the new year,

Ngā mihi mahana, Annalily van den Broeke – project manager Matuku Link

Images by our amazing volunteer photographer Stefan Marks