Four Upper Clutha community groups have received thousands in funding as the inaugural recipients of the Love Wānaka community fund.

Love Wānaka - and a Love Queenstown counterpart in Wakatipu - were formed last year by the district’s regional tourism organisations with the goal of promoting regenerative tourism.

Te Kākano Aotearoa, WAI Wānaka, Wānaka Backyard Trapping and Upper Clutha Wilding Tree Group, alongside three other organisations in Queenstown, received funding.

“Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do, and we couldn’t be happier to be working together across the entire visitor industry to support these incredible initiatives,” Love Queenstown and Love Wānaka community fund coordinator Ash Bickley said.

Te Kākano Aotearoa’s $10,000 grant will support its ongoing native revegetation programmes and WAI Wānaka’s $7,924 will go towards its waterway health project ‘Our Drains Are Streams’.

The $7,500 granted to Wānaka Backyard Trapping will help them expand their trapping lines around the Upper Clutha and the $10,000 to the Upper Clutha Wilding Tree Group will support the removal of wilding pines on the face of Mt Roy.

Ash said the grants have been made possible through support from the local business community and visitors in Queenstown and Wānaka.

“In just one year we’ve formed a number of key partnerships and have had some great support from the tourism industry, with businesses big and small contributing both financially and in-kind.” 

Groups like Siddartha’s Intent NZ and GOOD Travel have made generous financial contributions, Ash said.

Love Wānaka and Love Queenstown are initiatives from the region’s recently adopted ‘Destination Management Plan: Travel to a Thriving Future’.

Read more: New tourism plan adopted for district

PHOTO: Supplied