Today from The Detail: When the money dries up, gains made by a wave of Covid-inspired funding are likely to be lost.

They have the newly gained skills, the training and willingness to do one of the country's most vital jobs, but the funding has run out and there's no one to pay for jobs for nature.

A funding bonanza for nature that was seeded during the Covid pandemic is approaching its end date.

In the King Country's ancient Pureora Forest Robert John Muraahi and his small team of pest control workers have been preparing the land for the return of kiwi.

Muraahi has been doing the work as a volunteer for years but with funding from the Covid-19 scheme Jobs for Nature he was able to set up his own business and hire young local people, including unemployed and former prisoners.

The work meant they were returning to the land that their people had lived and worked on for generations.

"They are my success stories, they've come out on top," Muraahi tells The Detail. "All their certificates, all their training certificates that they've achieved in that time are now hanging in their lounges and in frames and stuff, they're very proud of what they've achieved."

But the Jobs for Nature money has run out and without long-term contracts Muraahi is struggling to keep the team together.

It is one of hundreds of pest control, forest restoration and freshwater projects funded by the $1.2 billion Jobs for Nature (J4N) scheme launched in 2020.

"It's empowered us significantly because there were also cultural outcomes. Part of the criteria for jobs for nature was I had to take people with no education background or training history and develop them," says Muraahi.

"We over-achieved in terms of employment outcomes, in terms of our training outcomes and also in terms of our conservation outcomes," he tells The Detail.

The scheme was funded for five years, creating 14,000 jobs, but many projects have ended or are about to finish, leaving workers and the projects themselves facing an uncertain future.

Project leaders have told The Detail they are scrambling to find alternative sources of funding through philanthropists, businesses and communities, but say the lack of forward planning will mean the work on some of the programmes is wasted.

"The minute you stop doing pest control in a forest the re-invasion begins," says David Peters, chair of Project Parore which has been restoring the waterways feeding into Tauranga Harbour since 2008, supported by a $1.75 Jobs for Nature grant.

"Pure volunteerism is not going to get the results we need," he says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details