Curious Minds
Kura and hapori – Curious Minds
We continue to work alongside the three kura in our rohe and ran an inaugural school holiday taiao programme in October with our whānau.
Curious Minds Taranaki came to an end in 2024. Ngāti Mutunga is proud to have been a recipient of four Curious Minds funding rounds from 2016 through to 2024 and have delivered participatory science across our rohe for tamariki and whānau through collaborations with TRC, our Kura, Taranaki Catchment Communities, NPDC and GNS.
At the Te Puna Umanga Venture Taranaki celebration of achievements evening at Puke Ariki our Pou Taiao presented a summary of Ngāti Mutunga projects to members of the scientific community from across Taranaki. It all started with Kimihia Kermit, then Papapokepoke. We made an impact with Te Ahua o Te Kūrei and finished with Kimihia Kōura.
Kimihia Kōura was launched in March, accompanied by the development of an app to engage whānau to participate and upload their sightings of Kōura. The TRC Education Team and Taiao team ran introductory lessons in Urenui, Mimi and Uruti kura on Kōura and then took the tamariki out on field trips to set whakaweku (kōura trap) and to find habitats. The Whakaweku is a traditional Kōura catch method (similar to Tau Kōura) that uses fern fronds bound together and laid on the floor of the stream into which Kōura crawl and make home. Then you pull the whakaweku out and retrieve the Kōura. Whānau have been uploading their Kōura sightings into the Survey123 app. These are mapped into our GIS system to provide an insight into their surviving habitats. More whānau taiao days are planned across the summer months to conduct a few surveys in our upper catchments, particularly Taramoukou, Pouiatoa and Waitara-iti.
We took a group of Ngāti Mutunga tamariki out to the Uruti nohoanga site for the first school holiday programme organised by the Te Whiringa team. The children had a great day hanging out, doing some freshwater monitoring and contributing to our Kimihia Kōura Curious Minds project.
As part of our commitment to the Curious Minds project run by Mimi School exploring the benefits of eco-sourcing for riparian planting, the Pou Taiao accompanied their tamariki to various waterways at different stages of riparian forestation to carry out simple water testing and observations. It was a great day and some very interesting results were found.
Congratulations to Uruti Kura winning the TRC Environmental Action in Education Award 2024, recognising the amazing mahi being done for the taiao as everyday practice, which includes tree planting to protect their river bank, predator trapping and graphing, recycling tī kōuka leaves for fire starters and making newspaper bricks to keep the fire glowing, composting and feeding a worm farm to fertilise the school gardens, Mauri Compass surveys with the Taiao team and whānau and drawing signage to protect Kororā and Dotterel populations at Onaero Beach and Tongapōrutu.
