Land Guardians

Land Guardians

Project 2013-08-17 06:24:05 +1200

Now you don't have to be a billionaire to help preserve beautiful places around New Zealand - would you pay a dollar or two to preserve one square meter of NZ native bush? 

Land Guardians is a social enterprise that uses crowd funding, in cooperation with landowners, to preserve areas of natural importance. We are developing exciting possibilities for collaborative conservation between everyday Kiwis. Sometimes landowners cannot afford to preserve their land even though they believe in the value of maintaining natural environments. Often, the only options landowners have to realise the land’s value is to farm it or log it. Land Guardians provides the ability to recognise the lands intrinsic natural value - everyday Kiwis can make contributions, from as little as one dollar, to collectively preserve and enhance areas of natural significance. 

Michael Sly owns a pristine section of coastal podacarp forest near Colac Bay on the South Coast of Southland. It is one of the few sections of virgin native bush remaining on the coast. He bought the land to preserve it from being turned into pasture land. The aerial photograph (below) shows the land right up to his boundary has been cleared. Michael's vision is to create a series of small huts and lodges that blend with the surroundings - a harmonious landscape hotel. But he can't do it on his own and this is where the Land Guardians come in. We’re in the process of finalising an agreement with Michael to enable him to preserve this iconic piece of land for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

If you share our's and Michael's vision and believe in being a Land Guardian, pledge and preserve the following amounts of Southland coastal virgin New Zealand bush:

• $1.00 = 0.8m2 (Although the minimum pledge is $5 the $1.00 amount will be available online through our web platform following further development)
• $5.00 = 4.0m2
  
• $25.00 = 19.9m2
• $50.00 = 39.8m2
• $100.00 = 79.5m2
• $500.00 = 397.6m2

(All rewards/amounts exclude PledgeMe's fees, circa 8 percent).

We’re also looking into other pieces of New Zealand land with exciting opportunities for collaborative conservation. Imagine if this model had been available when developers bought the land at Blue Bay in Mahia with the intention of building an upmarket holiday park. Locals resisted the development because of concerns over access to the beach. Ultimately the developer went into receivership and the land lies empty, untended.  Community involvement through tools like crowd funding may well have changed this outcome. 

Equally, places like parts of the beautiful New Chums beach on the Coromandel, plagued by disagreement between locals and land owners could benefit from this model. 

We would love to hear from other land owners, who can see the potential of this social enterprise model. 

The model of collaborative conservation through crowd funding is infinitely scalable and we are excited about scaling and expanding the model to other industries.

See our Facebook, Twitter, or for questions or inquiries contact [email protected] 

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