Brook Sanctuary – Emergency Flood Appeal

On Monday 26 May, Nelson was hit with intensive rain causing a major slip and breach of the predator-proof fence and damaging flooding to the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary.

🚧 A major slip on the predator-proof fence, creating a serious biosecurity breach (thankfully now resolved by our amazing team!)
🌊 Flooding above head height
🏚 Damage to the historic 1909 dam and handrails
📉 Loss of vital detection and monitoring equipment

The Operations Team sprang into action and within 4 hours the fenceline was secured temporarily and pest detection was underway (none were found). Footage taken of the intense flooding was gathering traction on social media.

Elevate jumped into action and within a few hours had national and local media being taken up to the slip site as well as videographers and drone pilots to capture the damage. 1News broadcast the story on the 6pm news.

By Tuesday lunchtime, we had created a campaign webpage with embedded donation links and started an intensive campaign of contacting local groups, stakeholders and businesses asking them to share the campaign and donate. Our posts were shared by the community in groups, by businesses like Uniquely Nelson, Nelson Airport, Cable Bay Recreation Park and by individuals like the Mayor and MP. An email marketing campaign was launched to volunteers, subscribers, members and sponsors.

The campaign quickly gathered momentum and nearly $40,000 was secured by COB on Tuesday. Over the following days, we worked closely with the Sanctuary team to secure footage of the clean up, create a ‘thank you’ video from the Chief Executive and to keep everyone informed.

By Friday 30 May, we had reached our $100,000 fundraising goal and the donations continued to ‘flood in’.

In total, over $130,000 was raised in less than a week and the Sanctuary can now proceed with the clean up and if funds remain after this, they will be held in reserve for similar extreme weather events in the future.

This campaign showed the true power of community and what can be achieved.