Star Trek Online details the rewards for the Lukari Restoration Initiative

Why is the Federation fighting the Tzenkethi in Star Trek Online? To defend a sentient race, obviously. (You don’t need as much justification for the KDF, as Klingons will fight someone if they have an hour to kill until dinner.) But why will players fight the Tzenkethi? Why, to earn reputation with the Lukari Restoration Initiative in the hopes of getting powerful traits, weapons, and kit components. It’s a good thing that altruism rewards you with powerful artifacts, otherwise it would be much harder to motivate.

Players can unlock new kit pieces specialized to each class option (special drones for Engineering, disabling webs for Science, and electrical grenades for Tactical) and new traits disabling weapons and shielding your allies. You can also get a new ground set, a new space set, and all of the according benefits of both. In summary, there’s a whole mess of new toys to play around with once you’ve defended the Lukari, which should help give you a good idea of why you’re defending them beyond story reasons..