Community-based monitoring is a powerful way to understand and connect to our local environments.
It empowers community scientists to observe and document the ecosystems they are already caring for.
Mountains to Sea Wellington, as part of the Wairarapa Catchment Collective, currently supports groups primarily with freshwater monitoring but can also assist with a wide range of community-led initiatives. With summer approaching and more people spending time in the taiao, it’s a great opportunity to try one of these programmes. Whether you're part of a group or just curious, get in touch to learn more about tools that help track and protect the places we love.
Shark Spy - build the knowledge of sharks and rays around Aotearoa - you can participate either by classifying data on the sharkspy website or loading sightings of sharks and rays in iNaturalist under the sharkspy project.
Freshwater Fish database - a national database to log observations of freshwater and marine fish species. The database helps to build a national picture of population dynamics, habitat availability, and informing decisions on management.
Fish passage assessment tool - a tool to assess structures in waterways to determine if they are a barrier to fish. The information is loaded into a national database and assigned a risk class to allow an understanding of remediation required.
Marine Metre - designed for community and schools the MM2 project aims to better understand our coastline through seashore surveys across the country.
Litter intelligence - Aotearoa’s first and only national litter monitoring programme, enabling communities to collect data, gain insights and take action to prevent litter.
5 minute bird counts - to understand the impacts of your planting or pest control work, 5MBC can be used to understand the bird presence in your area.
Predator control tracking tools - record the success of your predator control using tools like TrapNZ or CatchIt
INaturalist - record observations of the biodiversity that you see around you. This can either be contributing to an existing project area, or creating your own.
