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!

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!

phil(whoar.co.nz)

I’ve signed up !

The website looks very interesting.

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.

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)

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