The Raukūmara Forest on New Zealand’s East Cape has been hammered by introduced pests in the past half-century, and experts predict ecological collapse within a decade without an immense scale-up of pest control efforts.
On April 1 this year, the New Zealand government announced a fund for “shovel-ready” projects to provide much-needed jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two Māori tribal groups with ancestral claims to the Raukūmaras are campaigning for $21 million from the fund to carry out intensive pest control in the forest over the next five years.
Two Māori iwi, or tribal groups, are campaigning for a portion
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