One week left to make a difference
The deafening dawn chorus from native birds in our forests and backyards. The health of Wai Whakaata - Lake Hayes. The native bat population in Glenorchy. These aren’t abstract environmental concerns - they’re the specific things that donations to Love Queenstown and Love Wānaka help protect.
Next Tuesday, 30 June, is the fundraising cutoff for this year’s grants round from Love Queenstown and Love Wānaka. What’s raised by that date shapes how much the funds can contribute to local conservation, restoration, and biodiversity organisations when applications open in July.
Community Fund Coordinator Ash Bickley: “The organisations applying for these grants are doing work that’s so vital for our region’s wellbeing yet is often hard to fund through conventional means - it’s hands-on, long-term, and the returns are ecological rather than financial.
“The Love Queenstown and Love Wānaka funds exist to enable the visitor economy to support this mahi. No single organisation can do it alone. But when a community gets behind a network of people and projects working towards the same goal, the magic happens.”
Grants of between $5,000 and $10,000 will be available to local charitable organisations, with applications open 14 July through 6 August.
Since 2023, the two initiatives have raised over $250,000 for environmental mahi, planted more than 10,000 native trees, and reached over 12 million visitors with stories of sustainable and regenerative travel.
Last year, $85,505 was shared across 12 organisations working across both regions, while 20% of every contribution was also invested into endowment funds, helping build a legacy that will continue to support community and environmental projects in Queenstown and Wānaka for generations to come.
The range of work those grants supported gives a sense of how varied - and how interconnected - the environmental challenges across the district actually are.
In Glenorchy, the Tāhuna Glenorchy Dark Skies Group used their grant to expand a pekapeka (native bat) monitoring programme from a 10-device pilot to 25 monitors, building the data needed to understand population trends across wetlands, valleys, and village areas.
“We’re absolutely thrilled to have Love QT’s continued support as we expand and grow our bat conservation programme,” Leslie Van Gelder, Chair of Tāhuna-Glenorchy Dark Skies, said on receiving the grant.
“Last year’s pilot gave us the confidence that this work can make a real difference, and now we’re ready to scale up and deliver even greater outcomes for our nocturnal wildlife. It’s incredibly exciting to see this vision coming to life, and we’re so grateful for the backing that makes it possible”
At Lake Hayes, Mana Tāhuna used their funding to run spring maintenance sessions at Wai Whakaata – hand-weeding, invasive species removal, re-mulching - protecting the 165,000 riparian and native plants already established there.
In Wānaka, Plastic Free Wānaka received $10,000 to advance the SUCfree campaign - working toward making Wānaka the first single-use-cup-free town in Aotearoa - while WAI Wānaka’s ‘Make it Count’ campaign brought water testing, citizen science, and education to holidaymakers and absentee homeowners around the lake.
Meanwhile, the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust launched a biodiversity monitoring programme to track the impact of its volunteer predator control network, which removes around 13,000 predators each year.
And the Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust, in partnership with Dart River Adventures, began developing Operation Birdsong - using recorded native birdsong to show visitors what the forest once sounded like, and what restoration could bring back.
Mat Woods, CEO of Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism, says: “These funds are a direct result of visitor and business generosity and are a great example of how tourism can support real, on-the-ground environmental action. This is about building a regenerative future for our region.”
The long-term endowment funds are managed by the 45South Community Foundation, building financial resilience for environmental work well beyond the annual grants cycle.
Donate before 30 June loveqt.co.nz, or lovewanaka.co.nz, or get in touch to discuss partnership options.
