Nominations Open for WWF Conservation Innovation Awards 2017!

Deadline: 15 October 2017

Nominations are open for WWF Conservation Innovation Awards 2017 that are WWF-New Zealand’s challenge for conservationists, community groups, product designers, researchers, backyard inventors and others to come up with innovative ways to increase the scale and effectiveness of conservation in New Zealand.

Prize Categories

Engaging young people and communities:
- This category is for ideas that will increase the scale and effectiveness of community engagement in conservation
- Particularly innovations in the areas of environmental education and engagement efforts for on-the-ground community conservation
- Ideas can include
  - The development of new tools for engaging and educating communities or specific audiences in conservation
  - New ways of approaching common community engagement techniques.
Predator Free New Zealand 2050:
- This category is for ideas relating to eradication of mammalian predators in New Zealand (with a focus on possums, rats and stoats).
- Ideas could relate, for example, to the development of new predator control methods (e.g. new technologies, etc.) or new innovations for scaling, reducing the costs or increasing the efficiency of existing techniques.
Open Category: All environmental solutions welcome here, as a long as they align with the main Awards criteria

Prize Information

a NZ$25,000 development grant
support for national and international publicity through WWF channels
Winners are eligible for return airfares and one night’s accommodation for one representative to attend the Awards event in Wellington on 22 November 2017, up to the value of $400.

Eligibility Criteria

Entry to the Awards is open to any person or entity, or group of people or entities, who are resident, or carrying on business, or operating in New Zealand. Applicants do not need to be a legal entity (a trust or an unincorporated society is fine) or a registered charity. They can be a commercial organisation.
For research based applications only: Applicants must be a student or employee of a New Zealand university, crown research institute or other New Zealand research organisation.
Applications must relate to an idea aimed at increasing the scale and/or effectiveness of conservation in New Zealand, and must have the potential to be replicated.
Ideas can be at any stage of their development from concept to completion.
Applicant’s idea must be innovative. This means that their idea must be
- Novel – a new idea or a new development to an existing idea
- Replicable – an idea that can be replicated in other areas/regions in New Zealand
- Enduring – an idea that has longevity and can be beneficial beyond the short term