Also, for those interested in practical actions that directly conserve NZ native forest and other wilderness areas, a plug for the NZ Native Forests Restoration Trust: http://www.nznfrt.org.nz/
and the QEII Trust:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.nz/ . Anyone can make a donation to these Trusts, or join as a member.

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michaelangelo,

During a brief visit back to NZ a couple of years ago, I visited Tiritiri with my mother and younger daughter. It was about the nearest I’ve ever been to a religious experience. We saw nearly all the species of birds we might have seen, and my 6 year old marked them off proudly on her leaflet.

The story of clawing an island back from a state of desolate pastureland to the current rich bush environment is a true inspiration. Thanks for your part in it!

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I visited Tiritiri Matangi several years ago, on a day trip with a corporate group. The birdsong was wonderful, and I thoroughly recommend the experience!

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Natural habitat
Anyone here been to Tiritiri Matangi in the Hauraki Gulf recently. This is an extremely good example of “going for it” and making a difference over a very short time.
When I managed the project from inception over a 2 year period, it was a relatively bleak and bare small island off the Whangaparoa peninsula with a few tuis and bellbirds.

Once the public planting programme started to take hold its habitat and wildlife opportunity doubled. First the saddlebacks followed by takahe, kiwi, kokako, stitchbirds and so on. The principle was easy – first plant perching points for the birds to roost and defacate the ingested seed and provide them with a luxuriant food source that was sited near the walking tracks. The perching points were pohutukawa which have shaded out the grass and around each of these, now large trees, is a raft of food producing vegetation. The birds have spread the forest.

My son visited the island yesterday and could not recognise any of the places he used to play in when he lived there. He also mentioned tripping over takehe and stitchbirds.

If we can take a piece of land and regenerate forest and wildlife so quickly – why are we not doing it more often. The great thing about Tiri was the public involvement with tree planting. if you have never been there – its worth visiting a live NZ nature project which is very accessible from Auckland. Imagine the sound of a kokako ringing in your ears as it scurries along a branch a metre away from where you are standing!

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good site..i’ve done a blurb on/link to it..

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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eredwen – I am glad to hear you like the site. I too find it interesting.

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Thanks Prim,

I’ve signed up !

The website looks very interesting.

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Here is a plug for the “Ecology Fund” website.

I feel strongly that wilderness and biodiversity have inherent value and should be preserved. At a practical level, I have been doing this recently by visiting the following website each day:

http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html

When I click on a button on the site (for free), a site sponsor makes a donation that protects an area of wilderness. One person can protect 63 square feet of land for free in this way, each day. It all adds up. When I visit site sponsors’ webpages, sponsors donate even more.

The bottom of the site’s homepage displays some interesting numbers – estimates for total world human population, total natural habitat, and natural habitat per human capita. Over the last couple of weeks that I have been visiting the site, their last figure has decreased from around 6587 square metres per capita, to around 6581 square metres per capita. I find it scary just how fast they think this decline is happening. But at least they are trying to do something about it. I think their site is useful, not just for directly saving wilderness land, but also in raising awareness.

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Lynley : Welcome to Frogblog! You said : I don’t agree with Kiore1 that wilderness is a made up western concept.

That’s not exactly what he said… in fact there are different and distinct views about conservation, which are each legitimate.

Euros don’t have the cultural construct of “wilderness” that we may have, because they are conscious of having been part of the landscape for centuries.
The “new world” (the Americas, Aus, us, etc) have the somewhat fallacious impression of having arrived into a virgin landscape. NZ’s ecology had been affected quite a lot already by a thousand years of contact with humans (and their friend the … kiore!)

But I quite agree that it’s legitimate to want to restore ecosystems to a state where they function without human impact. That’s equally true in Europe, but a lot harder! (e.g. permitting the continued existence/reintroduction of bears and wolves in France meets very strong resistance)

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“that the solution to crowded Great Walks is to turn other areas into Great Walks. To spread tourists out more.”

And where do all the people who are trying to get away from it all then go??

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I think it says something about this debate that it is the reason I joined frogblog five minutes ago. I care deeply about wilderness. The biodiversity, clean water, carbon sinks, environment, sure. But wilderness! So here is a hodgepodge of replies…

I find it somewhat disheartening that most people commenting here seem to think that wilderness, in and of itself, is unimportant. Ask your heart – do you want a gondola up Mt Cook? A road through the middle of untracked Fiordland?

I don’t agree with Kiore1 that wilderness is a made up western concept. In New Zealand there have always been large tracts of land without people for the vast majority of the time.

Comparing a few people living within National Park boundaries, because that is where they have always lived, is not analogous with fighting the threats we face today: helicopters, tourism operations, roads…

This morning on National Radio I heard Al Morrison say that the solution to crowded Great Walks is to turn other areas into Great Walks. To spread tourists out more.

There are serious issues to contend with here, and I’m not at all confident in our decision makers, if Al is anything to go by.

Moz is right when she says that not all countries treat National Parks as places where, as Stu says “activities are seriously controlled�. New Zealand is one such country. We have a coal mine within a National Park here on the West Coast. Who could consider that a serious control?

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anyone else hear about nader offering the green party ticket to gore..?

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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well yes, conservation can be separated from environmentalism, but totally relies on it to have any point , i can help create a wildlife sanctuary but there is absolutely no point if the environment in which it sits go’s bunk .
i would say that the environmental movement is helping conservation by raising consciousness in this direction in general ,

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I see conservationists as a sub-discipline of environmentalists. They both work to prevent the negative effects of human activity on the environment. Conservationists focus on species and sometimes on ecosystems whereas environmentalists focus on the whole lot. There are no words that describe, say, those who advocate for less pollution or for those who advocate for less intensive land development or less waste.

One neologism I would like to see is that which describes “the negative effects of human activity on the environment”. Currently it is “environment” or “environmental” which have very wide meaning.

How about “enviroism” and “enviroist” a-la racism and racist?

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Spot on, Kiore.

In Europe, people have been shaping the landscape, and being shaped by it, for thousands of years. A sustainable equilibrium has been arrived at, in a variety of biotopes, between man and “nature”. That was destabilised in the second half of the 20th century, because of technology-driven agricultural productivity, but it’s still able to be rolled back to a state of sustainability.

(Typically, agricultural productivity in Europe is lower than in the “new Europes”, precisely because there is an instinctive reticence about mining the topsoil.)

There are practically no climax forests in western Europe — something that has taken me a couple of decades to get used to. It’s all managed. If I wanted, I could date the disappearance of mature oak trees from my area by examining the growth rings in the tree trunks that are the main beams of my house. Somewhere between 150 and 200 years ago is my guess.

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So the ‘cannot live with wilderness’ is a badge…

…and you meant ‘without’ to be sure.

respectfully
BJ

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Dave Foreman takes a view of conservation fairly typical of the USA and other “neo-Europes” where there he sees part of conservation is preserving large tracts of land with no humans in it. Humans are seen to be the enemy of the environment. In its extreme version (not that I am saying Dave or the Greens subscribe to this), such environmentalists will even kick indigenous people out of areas they have been part of for millenia in an effort to preserve wilderness.

This is probably linked to the history of the USA, Australia, New Zealand and other “neo-Europes” where white settlers came into an area they regarded as “terra nullis” nd where there they thought there was a contrast betwen settlement and wilderness.

The attitudes in Europe and Japan are very different. National parks in Japan had people already living in them when they were declared national parks, and they still live within the park boundaries. In Europe, farmers are seen as conservationists and protectors of traditional culture as well as business people and the role of agriculture is considered multi-functional. British public footpaths go through agricultural lands and have done for centuries. This contrasts with New Zealand where agriculture is a business, the farmer’s role is to get as much out of the land as possible, and while farmers may also be environmentalists in that they would support protection of wild nature, they would see the country divided between nature reserves and the rest. In Europe, farms are considered part of the nature reserve, and in Japan nature reserves include farms.

In the European and Japanese model, humans are considered part of the environment, not something the environment has to be protected from. And as we learn more about indigenous people we realise the pre-Europen neo-Europes were not as pristine as we thought. In the Amazon for example, it is thought that shifting cultivation always went on, and that humans actually helped biodiversity in this way by periodically opening new clearings.

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there was pretty extensive comment on this issue over at gristmill earlier this week.

for me as a “centrist” these are not mutually exclusive. with many issues i’d say i adopt a “resourcist” position but in most cases thats a pragmatic position reflecting that humans have a tendancy to dominate.

i’ve a strong “conservationist” ethic that relies on public protection of natural habitat (stu, above). i love the outdoors – tramping and kayaking especially. to loose that setting would be unthinkable.

i’m sure that my “resourcist” work wouldn’t have the same drive without this “conservationist” ethic.

cheers
mike

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“Cannot live with wilderness” ? I would say “Cannot live without wilderness” like Dave. Land developers would with the first quote. I would check that out Frogie read it again.
Yours Kindly
Drakula

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and um..do real conservationists ‘eat-em’..?

(the animals they are trying to ‘conserve’..)

and are they just conserving to make sure there will always be something to kill..?

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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