For us at WithWild the recipe is quite straight forward, we want to continue to grow our positive impact in National Parks and conservation land throughout Aotearoa, New Zealand, working with organisations that share our values and mindset. The primary aim of these partnerships is to deliver enhanced conservation outcomes in areas that have introduced species that require management to reduce their impact on our native flora and fauna.
Our first priority is to expand our partnership with the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation (FWF), and to recover more deer from within Fiordland National Park. But we won’t stop just at Fiordland, we are looking to partner with other leading organisations throughout New Zealand, and target other introduced species.
We’re also investigating ways to utilise all parts of the deer, exploring how we can upcycle and repurpose all elements of the recovered animal, from the hide to the antler. Each new product will have a giveback component built in, ensuring our partners can continue to deliver their incredible conservation projects. Currently for every kilo of protein we sell, $3.30 goes back to the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation. This money goes towards helping fund numerous projects including those that help protect our Kiwi, Kea, Kaka, Weka and Whio.
We believe that eradication of deer in places such as the Fiordland National Park is not a cost effective goal in the short term using current practices and technologies. But through sound population management, we can reduce the damage that is currently being done, with the aim to maintain animal numbers under ecological thresholds set by the Department of Conservation.
We are promoting this new kind of approach, where we balance impact and economics, giving more kiwi’s the ability to make a conscious choice that helps protect our iconic places.
We want to celebrate and promote a growing movement of New Zealanders who are acutely aware of where their protein comes from, those who make conscious decisions. We call them “Wildatarians”.
A Wildatarian is someone that enjoys products that come from the wild rather than from the more traditional farmed options.
We believe our recovered wild animals provide some of the cleanest and healthiest protein one can enjoy. The animal is fit, lean, and has roamed throughout the Fiordland landscape, whilst grazing on natural fauna and foliage. No fertilisers, no feed supplements, no chemicals just wild.
The diet and lifestyle produces delicious protein, full of flavour.
Wild really is the obvious choice for future generations, and we believe Wildatarians will help us achieve ongoing positive outcomes in National Parks throughout Aotearoa, New Zealand.
We’re mindful of our environmental impact. We have sense checked our extraction process for Fiordland Wapiti versus leaving an animal in the park to decompose. Our challenge for 2022/23 was to extract 600 Wapiti in partnership with the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation from a 175,000ha area of Fiordland National Park.
The emissions created from the extraction process relative to those prevented from utilisation of the Wapiti results in a neutral to slightly favourable outcome.
27,864kgs avoided less 25,443kgs emitted = 2,421kgs CO2 prevented from entering the atmosphere.
We haven’t accounted for the biomass that is consumed by deer throughout the year and the positive impact that removing them has on carbon stocks within the beech and podocarp forest environments. It’s a small start, but it gives us confidence that the ends justify the means.
