Wai Connection – Tatai Ki Te Wai
National science and technical lead for Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest community freshwater programme – building the Focus Catchment Map Series, spatial tools, and science resources that helped Provider Organisations empower the catchment groups they supported. Also provided direct science and engagement support to 79 catchment groups in the Waitaha/Canterbury region.
2023–2026
context
New Zealand’s Essential Freshwater reforms created both a legal obligation and a community opportunity – a coherent national framework for freshwater management that needed not just regulatory action, but genuine engagement with the people living and working in catchments. ‘Wai Connection – Tatai Ki Te Wai’ was designed to bridge that gap: a national programme delivering on-the-ground catchment community support across Aotearoa through Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust’s network of regional Provider Organisations. To function at national scale, the programme needed a scientific and technical backbone capable of turning complex freshwater data and policy into tools that catchment groups, iwi, and landowners could actually use. EOS was able to deliver on that key role, as well as to directly deliver the regional support in the Waitaha/Canterbury region as this region’s MTSCT Provider Organisation.
challenge
- To help catchment groups, iwi, and community better understand their local catchment and to help guide them in their restoration efforts we needed to find a way to pull together data from 150+ national and regional sources, in formats designed for technical specialists, not interpreted for the people making decisions on the ground.
- Providing consistent, high-quality scientific support across hundreds of catchments simultaneously, each with different ecology, data availability, and community character, required building systems and tools, not delivering services case by case.
- To bring cohesiveness to a national programme delivered by different organisations in each region, by creating a coherent ‘look and feel’ for the programme and helping to build a nationally delivered, regionally focused programme platform.
- EOS held a genuinely dual responsibility: designing and maintaining the national science infrastructure while simultaneously serving as the Waitaha/Canterbury regional delivery partner.
our role
EOS Ecology holds two contracted roles within Wai Connection: as National Science and Technical Support Provider – responsible for the spatial, scientific, and communication infrastructure that enables the programme to function consistently across all regions – and as the MTSCT Provider Organisation for Waitaha/Canterbury, delivering direct catchment community support, monitoring, and engagement across the region. Our team of scientists, GIS specialists, science interpreters, and designers provided wraparound support to nine regions, while our Canterbury delivery team works directly with catchment groups, rūnanga, and landowners on the ground.
how we approached it
- Designed and produced the Focus Catchment Map Series (FCMS) — EOS’s own product and the programme’s centrepiece science deliverable. Each FCMS is a ~30-map, print-ready A3 publication synthesising 150+ national and regional data sources (past land cover, waterway classifications, water quality, fish and macroinvertebrate data, coastal receiving environment) into a single, interpreted, catchment-specific resource. Produced 52 FCMS publications across 8 regions, covering 3.7 million hectares, processing over 2.85 million raw data records from 9,228 monitoring sites. The FCMS has a life beyond the Wai Connection project, with EOS able to produce this for any catchment in Aotearoa, for anyone who would like it.
- Designed and delivered 47 FCMS science workshops, engaging 118 organisations nationally – each a three-hour session facilitated by an EOS senior scientist, pairing publication handover with guided interpretation. Built the full FCMS support ecosystem: Default Guideline Values and Visual Clarity quick guides, FAQ document, overview PowerPoint, short- and long-form videos, and the 19-page Essential Freshwater Summary translating the NPS-FM 2020 and associated regulations into plain language.
- Developed a scoping document and structure architecture for a Community Based Freshwater Monitoring (CBFM) website that could hold and interpret catchment group environmental monitoring data. Through this we also developed the first country-wide comprehensive online map of catchment groups across the motu.
- Developed the programme’s digital infrastructure — branding, graphic assets, the Wai Connection project website (waiconnection.nz) with a provider portal featuring GIS-based interactive maps and dashboards, online surveys, and a resources hub accessible to all Provider Organisations. Also produced an eDNA Sampling guide and 30+ catchment group stories from across Aotearoa.
- Delivered the Canterbury/Waitaha regional programme – directly supporting 79 catchment groups ranged across the entirety of the Waitaha/Canterbury region, from Kaikoura in the north to Hakataramea in the south. Facilitated community-based freshwater monitoring training, freshwater surveys, restoration planning, designing long-term monitoring programmes following the Community Based Monitoring framework, school-based collaboration through our connected Nature Agents programme, running and supporting public events, running and facilitating regional huis. Included working alongside iwi groups to support their own Mātauranga Māori cultural health assessments, providing supplementary resources, support and advice around ‘western science’ approaches. Established the Waitaha Regional Advisory Group alongside New Zealand Landcare Trust, Ministry for Primary Industries, and Environment Canterbury.
outcome
For the first time, catchment communities across eight regions of Aotearoa have a scientifically grounded, spatially relevant picture of their waterways, presented in a way that can be understood and acted on. By developing the FCMS in conjunction with regional council we were able to ensure that it didn’t conflict with other mapping and reporting being undertaken by Councils. Trevor James of Tasman District Council called the FCMS “an answer to my dreams” for how it integrates river health and coastal data “in a much more integrated way than has been reported in the past.” Environment Canterbury Principal Strategy Advisor Elaine Moriarty described EOS’s ability to take a large quantity of information and present it in an “easy to access, visually appealing and scientifically accurate way” as “outstanding.”
In addition to delivering the FCMS for 52 catchments across the country we were also able to support Provider Organisations and their catchment groups through wider science support and advice around water quality monitoring and eDNA sampling, and posters and infographics explaining complex system processes and fish species found in their region. The Wai Connection website became a central repository for the programme resources as well as a place for Provider Organisations to access GIS tools and dashboards to support them in their day to day work. The CMB scoping document has proven the need for a centralised website to hold and interpret monitoring data for groups, and how this could be manged and built.
In Canterbury/Waitaha, EOS’s regional delivery connected catchment groups across north, mid and south canterbury – running monitoring wānanga, supporting restoration planning and monitoring, and building long-term community capacity to engage with freshwater management. The programme’s high expectations were met, with many project KPIs exceeded, and the programme continues into 2026 with a focus on farmer-led catchment groups.
wider impact
- The FCMS methodology is a replicable framework, transferable beyond Wai Connection to councils, iwi, and catchment management organisations seeking to make environmental monitoring data useful at the community level. The science workshop delivery model – pairing publication handover with scientist-facilitated workshops – demonstrates how science products can be designed from the outset to create understanding, not just transfer information.
- EOS’s dual role as national science and technical support provider and Canterbury regional delivery partner demonstrates what it looks like to embed genuine science systems capability inside a community programme – ensuring the tools are designed not only by technically trained specialists but also by those who work at the water’s edge with catchment communities.
Science Infrastructure for Community Programmes
National environmental programmes live or die on the quality of their science infrastructure — the data tools, spatial products, and communication resources that field staff and community groups rely on every day. EOS builds that infrastructure, and then delivers alongside it. If you’re running a community-facing programme that needs both scientific rigour and on-the-ground credibility, talk to us.