The Pūkaha Kawakawa Trust

Wairarapa Pūkaha to Kawakawa Alliance is a registered charity established in 2019 led by a vision for the whole of the Wairarapa landscape of thriving biodiversity, and connected communities. Where land, water and people flourish.

The Trust was created from a desire to connect, facilitate and enable the community to undertake positive environmental and biodiversity projects in the region.

Our mission is to promote community-led, large landscape-scale environmental restoration projects.

The Trust works with community groups as an enabler to raise their profile, build structure, and access specialist skills and resources. Our flagship venture has been the highly successful Catchment Community Project. We are the go-to hub for information, expertise, services and networks, so that community groups doing environmental projects are well supported, and can build momentum to affect change.

Our name recognises and includes the entire landscape, whaitua (water system)and communities across the whole district. Pūkaha (Mount Bruce) marks the northern boundary of Wairarapa and Kawakawa (Palliser Bay) the southern. Taken together the boundaries express the connection of the mountains to the seas (ki utaki tai) and the flow of our rivers to the coast.