From the Blog:
The financial backstory
Mortgage free in 3 years, for a $2,040.000 property? The trustees of the Matuku Reserve Trust had it on their wish list, and their wish came true, with the help of many parties along the way. This is the story of an Auckland unicorn... The story starts over fifteen...
Thank you donors!
None of our work could have been done without others supporting our vision. From the $5 donations on our Givalittle Campaign to the $450,000 from The Native Forest Restoration Trust to purchase the land, we couldn't have done it without you. Contributions towards the...
A picture is worth…
... a thousand words? Even more in our case I image, as it is very hard to describe a leaf of a tree, a rare bird or the energy of a group of volunteers. That is why we are extremely blessed to have not one, not two but THREE semi-professional photographers in our...
Big Barn Yarn
Remember how we started when we got the keys to Matuku Link in January 2017? Every working bee was about rubbish, cleaning up and clearing out. A lot of the work focussed around the old, 'well ventilated' barn, with the vision to restore it and turn it into our...
Winter Working Bee
Planting has never been so easy...with the ground soft and muddy, it was more akin to ladling chocolate pudding than our usual sweat-inducing exercise trying to dig a hole! In some cases this did result in mud actually flowing into shoes and sneakers,...
Big Green Day Out
For the second year in a row, the team of Ricoh showed up en masse for the Big Green Day Out! Great to have such an enthusiastic team of people helping us to plant, weed and learn about the environment. The weeding was around the trees which were planted...
June Working Bee
Despite the forecast, it only rained once... and with perfect timing, it came down at noon: a great excuse to pack up and have lunch. A very well deserved lunch it was, with all the tasks John had in mind for today, over and done with. Yeah! And even some...
Winter Working Bees
Winter Working Bees are usually all about water: rain from above, levels rising in the river, making the soil nice and muddy... a great time to do weeding (soft soil is so much easier to pull roots out of), planting, re-potting and with young ones (of all...
Alsco Planting Day
What a day!!! We couldn't have asked for better weather or a more enthusiastic bunch of people last Sunday. A large group of Alsco employees and other supporters of the Million Metres project came out to Matuku Link for a family day to help us 'search and...
Future predator control
Looking after our forest and wetland at Matuku Link is hard work: baiting, trapping, weeding, planting... and with all of your help we're doing it well. But in a mast year like this, extreme fruiting triggered by two warm winters, not only the birds are...
Kiwi Conservation Club
Our volunteer Derek March led the Kiwi Conservation Club (www.kcc.org.nz), the junior conservationist group, on a trip through Matuku Link celebrating the life and love of eels. With KCC coordinators Jean and Raewyn, everyone enjoyed the talk, the walk,...
May Working Bee with Pest
May Working Bee - trapping and baiting instructions Sunday 19th May - 10 am to 1 pm, followed by a shared lunch (optional but recommended!), 111 Bethells Road. As well as our regular Working Bee work (eating ice creams, having a natter, enjoying the...
April Working Bee
This working bee Sunday started with fog, clouds and drizzle...and it is the last day of the school holidays, so I didn't expect many helping hands. It turned out to be the opposite! Some Kiwi Conservation Club (www.kcc.org.nz) families, raising the next...
Rusty roof no more
Thanks to an amazing grant of $40.000 from TTCF, The Trusts Community Foundation, we were able to get our roof replaced, just before the winter rains set in. A team of hard working men from ReelRoofing did a fine job installing the sheets of pre-painted...
A Starry Night
Usually Ark in the Park and Forest & Bird Waitakere run 'Nightwalks with Nature' in summer near the Ark headquarters at the Cascades car park. But due to kauri dieback restrictions, that is out of bounds so they partnered up with Matuku Link to do "A...
April Working bee on 28th
As most people will be doing other things (Easter egg hunt?) on our usual Third Sunday of the month in April, we're getting together on the Fourth Sunday in stead. So our next Working Bee will be on: Sunday 28th of April, from 10 am We hope to see you...
Traps, traps, more traps
In an effort to control possums, trustee John Sumich and volunteer Anko placed self-resetting GoodNature A12 traps around the northern perimeter. It will help control the possums, as does our baiting regime and other traps we have out there. But having...
TTCF grant money!
The goal of repurposing the existing old barn into a Sustainable Wetland Education Centre is now much closer with $40,000 to be spend on a new roof, insulation and a new waste water treatment system. The removal of the asbesthos cladding from the barn was...
The Open Day in pictures
It felt a bit like a birthday party...and in a way it was: World Wetlands Day at Matuku Link! With cakes, candles, ice creams, picnicking families and hungry eels, it definitely was a party like no other. A lot of people already knew each other from...
A Night in the Bufferzone
A night walk on Saturday 13th of April, from 6 to 8 pm. Discover night life in the area around Ark in the Park, our largest conservation project, this time in the Bufferzone at Matuku Link: possibly pateke, glow worms and giant moths and maybe even bats!...
Thank you Friends
We can't do what we do without our sponsors. We had huge support from the Native Forest Restoration Trust, the Natural Environment Fund, Forest & Bird Waitakere, Friends of Regional Parks, Waitakere Ranges Protection Society, many, many individual donors and...
Contact us:
Secretary Annalily van den Broeke
022 692 2016 or email us at hello@matukulink.org.nzÂ
Physical address:
111 Bethells Road, Te Henga, Auckland
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