Tararu Valley - New Zealand Rainforest Conservation Volunteer Community
Kia Ora, welcome to Tararu Valley Sanctuary, a New Zealand based, volunteer run environmental reserve.
The Valley is several thousand acres of beautiful rainforest next to the sea, in the Coromandel Peninsula, 1.5 hours from Auckland, New Zealand.
The Sanctuary is an International Centre of Environmental Education and Action. We work to encourage our global community to participate in activities that restore native forest ecology and increase sustainability.
We believe that our Earth is not a commodity, but our community.
We take direct action to protect and restore the native forest ecosystem of Tararu Valley. This includes revitalising degraded farmland, legally protecting land, growing and planting trees, controlling animal pests and weeds, fencing to exclude pest animals, and forest research. The Sanctuary relies on your support - we need your donations, loans, advice, and physical labour to make a difference.
Our volunteer programme suits people interested in learning about conservation, enjoying the outdoors, and living a saner, richer and simpler life. Take part in our genuine Eco-Adventures as a residential volunteer and you'll experience New Zealand in a very special way while making a real contribution to Nature.
Our volunteer programs include a time-proven programme of recreation trips run continuously throughout the upper North Island of New Zealand. Activities include seakayaking, hiking, tramping, and camping, horse-riding, swimming and diving, rock-climbing and abseiling, caving and canoeing. Recreation also involves gentler activities like reading, board games, flax-weaving, yoga, meditation, art and music.
We know the terrain and we run trips to choose the best weather and take in those extra places and experiences - hot pools, alpine peaks, Pacific beaches, ancient forests, island sanctuaries, volcanic mudpools, and pristine mountain lakes. From kiwi birds to tuatara, butterflies to penguins, blue fungi to green lizards, little glow-worms to giant kauri trees you'll see Nature though new eyes with us.
The Sanctuary provides opportunities for people to step out of the mainstream world and explore ways of living sustainably, to lighten our ecological footprint - a way for travellers to give something back to Nature, while still experiencing some of the best adventures and sharing life with locals. Our efforts to live more sustainably include permacultural food production - with organic gardens and fruit trees, experimenting with earth building techniques, timber plantations, adopting renewable energy - windmills, solar panels and micro-hydro generation.
In addition, staff and volunteers undertake environmental service work - planting trees, ecological surveys and pest trapping on contract, as a way to help fund the Sanctuary and make a further gift to surrounding environs.
Find out how you can get involved by exploring our website, or jump straight to our residential volunteer programs.
