Last month, scientists from Scion, AgResearch, and the University of Canterbury joined Taranaki Regional Council educators for a Science Day at Pukeiti Gardens in Taranaki.

One hundred and fifty students from Francis Douglas Memorial College, Pembroke School, Stratford High School, Patea Area School, Moturoa School, and Green School New Zealand took part in workshops, where they observed tethered air balloons, learned about myrtle rust through a new app and how to identify moths, capture butterfly photos and study microbes in the air.

The highly sought after event was well received, the ākonga (students) were happy to be there and showed a high level of engagement with all the activities. Five of the six schools want to continue the learning programme offered by TRC within their school environment.

The energy, passion and enthusiasm from everyone involved shone through. This Meet the Scientists open day is part of a wider educational outreach programme in Taranaki encouraging children to participate in citizen science under the Protecting Aotearoa from wind-dispersed pests research programme.

The enthusiasm shown by these kids for learning about te taiao suggests the ngahere is going to be in great hands. We can already see the impact this programme is having, with one of the educators already catching and posting an extremely rare moth on iNaturalist. We know citizen scientists form an important part of our surveillance

Beyond the educational aspect, Scion’s researchers have been busy engaging with local communities in two wānanga with the Taranaki Maunga Project team and local Taranaki mana whenua in 2024. These gatherings allowed us to share our scientific knowledge alongside the rich mātauranga of our hosts.

Protecting Aotearoa from wind-dispersed pests is a five-year research programme (October 2023 to October 2028) aiming to strengthen our “biosecurity kukenga (net)” by creating a warning system to help us predict when insects and pathogens may arrive and spread by the wind. The Scion-led and MBIE-supported programme will protect our whenua from unwelcome organisms.

The programme aims to manage the aerial pathway of pest movement by developing a system to monitor formation of airbridges under certain meteorological conditions before pests and pathogens arrive. It will modernise wind trajectory modelling, study airbridges between land masses such as Australia and New Zealand, and fill knowledge gaps on how organisms survive long-distance migration in extreme atmospheric conditions.