Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari volunteers have responded to the project’s funding crisis with a book – to tell an alternative story.
Volunteer Voices
Volunteer Viv Clarke said the group of 18 long-term volunteers spent three years writing the book, filling it with stories hailing back to the dawn of the project 25 years ago “before they are lost forever”.
“Our group were just thinking that the Maungatautari project has had such a lot of negative publicity recently over the financial woes, that it would be wonderful to promote the positive stories in the book,” she said.
Philanthropists have met Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari’s cash flow crisis head on with $250,000 worth of funding, The News reported last month.
Maungatautari volunteer co-ordinator Lian Buckett, with, from left, Linda Just and Elaine Parkinson at the Lions Club of Cambridge “Trash ‘N’ Treasure Market”.
The book is described as a lively and interesting record from those who were involved in the early days.
The volunteers were initially aiming to create a coffee table style book but could not attract funding so they decided to self-publish the book.
The book tells the story of the people who dreamed of encircling Maungatautari with a pest-proof fence, how the community participation took place and how the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust was established to begin the task of restoring the mountain’s earlier ecosystems.
“Today the Maungatautari mountain ecosystem is flourishing with healthy native plant and animal life,” says the book’s introduction.
“Threatened species are breeding successfully on the 3400 hectares inside the pest-proof fence. The birdsong that was once on the verge of disappearing forever is returning, and a lush bush canopy is rapidly regenerating. It has become a world-class conservation project and is already as close to the pre-human New Zealand environment as it is possible to find at present. It is also an example of what the future could bring if Predator-Free 2050 succeeds.”
The 140-page Volunteer Voices: A Collection of Stories from Volunteers Involved in the Maungtautari Mountain Project is published this week for $25.
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari volunteers have written a book
