KĀHUI TAIAO TŪROA WEBINAR SERIES 2026
Restoring the Korowai of the Land
Indigenous Approaches at Scale
Tue, 08 Sept
|Webinar Series
Restoring the korowai of the land - indigenous approaches at scale (1)
Time & Location
08 Sept 2026, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Webinar Series
About the event
He kaupapa tēnei e karanga ana ki te hunga kaingākau ki te ngahere, ki te wai, ki te whenua - kia hoki anō ki ngā pūtake, kia whakatū i tētahi ara hou e toitū ai te mauri o te taiao.
Join us for the Kāhui Taiao Tūroa Webinar Series, an integrated Indigenous operating model for ngahere revitalisation. This series draws from lived experience, science practices, and practical delivery at scale - bringing together iwi, hapū, practitioners, and partners to explore how we restore balance across our ecosystems and our people.
HE WAKA EKE NOA
This is an open invitation to come together, to learn, to challenge, and to strengthen our collective response.
Register your interest and join the movement.
Let’s restore the balance - mauri to mauri, mountain to sea.
WEBINAR SCHEDULE
Each session builds on a whole-of-system approach
Mana in the Method (Understanding Systems)
28 May 2026
12pm - 1 pm
Reframing conservation through a systems lens - from mainstream models to Indigenous-led, integrated approaches.
Mauri First
25 June 2026
1pm - 2pm
Start with the ngahere - understanding what the forest needs, and letting that guide decisions and investment.
Mana at the Right Level
08 Septemeber 2026
1pm - 2pm
Ensure iwi and hapū are positioned in strategic decision-making roles.
Momentum & Consent (Consent & Storytelling)
23 September 2026
1pm - 2pm
Build trust, mandate, and community alignment - bringing people with the kaupapa
Tools with Confidence
28 October 2026
1pm to 2pm
Understand and use restoration tools (predator control, ungulate management, innovation) with clarity and confidence.
Measurement & Monitoring
25 November 2026
1pm - 2pm
Prove impact - combining tipuna and western sciences to track ecological, cultural, and social outcomes.
Ngā Kai Kōrero
Ensure iwi and hapū are positioned in strategic decision-making roles.
Mana at the Right Level is a kōrero about what it really takes to lead restoration at landscape scale - and why leadership cannot sit in only one place.
Using Raukūmara Pae Maunga as a case study, Ora Barlow and Wiremu Wharepapa will explore why and how an iwi-led kaupapa chose to navigate some of the most challenging conservation conversations, including aerial 1080 and landscape-scale deer control.
The Raukūmara experience has shown that mana needs to sit at the level where knowledge, responsibility and action are held. Ora and Wiremu will talk about the people leadership behind large-scale ecological restoration - how you create enough trust to have difficult conversations, hold different perspectives without losing direction, and make decisions at the scale and speed the ngahere requires.
The Raukūmara teaches us that iwi-led conservation is not about bringing people into somebody else's conservation system. It is about building a system around the whenua, the people and the kaupapa - connecting governance, mātauranga, science, operations and community leadership so each can exercise mana at the right level.
Ultimately, this is a kōrero about leadership distributed across a living system: from marae to kura, from the boardroom to the forest, and from today's decisions to the generations who will inherit the Raukūmara.
The question at the heart of the webinar is simple:
If the kaupapa is bigger than any one organisation or leader, how do we model mana, responsibility and decision-making at the right level to enable the whole system to move?
Wiremu Wharepapa
Wiremu Wharepapa (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou) has been involved with Raukūmara Pae Maunga from the beginning. He has been pivotal in community and iwi to iwi engagement across the country. Previously worked as a hapū activator for Save the kiwi. Now, he continues to support both kaupapa dedicating his time to restoring our waterways and ngahere from the mountain to the sea.
Ora Barlow
Ora Barlow (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāi Tai, Ngāti Porou) is Trustee for Raukūmara Pae Maunga, Pou Uruao a Motu Māori Engagement National Coordinator for Save the Kiwi. She is a Māori conservation leader advancing indigenous-led restoration. A trustee of Raukūmara Pae Maunga, she advocates for landscape-scale revitalisation of ancestral ngahere nationally and internationally. As Pou Uruao a Motu for Save the Kiwi, she champions intergenerational, environmental outcomes for iwi Māori.
WHY THIS SERIES MATTERS
Across Aotearoa, the scale of ecological challenge is increasing - biodiversity loss, climate pressure, and fragmented responses. This series recognises that:
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The system must change, not just the tools
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Indigenous leadership is central, not peripheral
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Restoration is as much about people as it is about place
As reflected in the model, “you can’t lead the forest if you don’t know it… and you can’t heal the forest if the people aren’t with you.”
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
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Iwi, hapū and whenua-based leaders
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Conservation practitioners and kaitiaki
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Councils, agencies and policy makers
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Community groups and project leads
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Anyone committed to restoring the mauri of our ngahere
Kāhui Taiao Tūroa (KTT) was established by Save the Kiwi in 2014 as a kaupapa to explore Indigenous, place-based approaches to conservation. Since then, KTT has travelled across Aotearoa, partnering with hapū and local organisations to host wānanga grounded in the lived realities of each place.
In 2025, Kāhui Taiao Tūroa was hosted in Te Kaha alongside the work of Raukūmara Pae Maunga. This hui brought together whakaaro, experience, and practice - reflecting both national insights and the lived delivery of whole-of-ngahere restoration at scale.
This webinar series is a distillation of those learnings from the years. It shares key insights from the Raukūmara hui, alongside the ongoing experiences of iwi, practitioners, and partners working to restore the ngahere through a whole-of-system restoration approach grounded in mauri, mana, and whakapapa.
Partners
