Conservation

Conservation

… it has to be regretted that, despite the fact that Man cannot replace them, the appalling destruction of our unique native birds and forest continues to this day.

Perrine Moncrieff writing in the preface to her guidebook for amateur bird lovers, New Zealand Birds and How to Identify Them, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1957, page XV

New Zealand’s flora and fauna have evolved in isolation for more than 80 million years since the landmass began breaking off and drifting away from Gondwana. This has ensured a distinctiveness so marked that many New Zealand plants and animals are found nowhere else. To put the geological timescale into context, early humans have walked upright for just 3.5 million years.

The islands’ precious cargo includes many Gondwanan relics and highly adapted species, and the changes wrought by Māori and then Pākehā saw one of the fastest transformations of a forested land to one of grasslands and shrub. Hence much of modern conservation is about protecting threatened species and habitat.

Following Leonard Cockayne’s death in 1934, three strongwilled individuals became the main players in conservation for a period. All three were from comfortable backgrounds, shared a love of birds and the bush, and thought profoundly about the relationship between people and the land.

Val Sanderson (1866-1945) was a hunter turned native game protector. He had served in the South African War and the First World War, and gave the last years of his life to developing the Forest and Bird organisation.

Herbert Guthrie-Smith (1863-1940), a Hawke’s Bay immigrant farmer with a passion for conservation, recorded the ecological traffic over his sheep station, Tutira, from the exploitative era of the 1880s to the emergence of the modern conservation ethic at the time of his death. He recorded the impact of anything exotic, from blackberry to red deer, as well as changes in indigenous flora and fauna. After dividing up much of Tutira for returning servicemen after the First World War, he continued to farm the remnant, and left about 800 hectares in trust to the nation.

Perrine Moncrieff (1893-1979) arrived in New Zealand after the First World War with her husband and settled in Nelson because ‘its vegetation was good for birds’. The Moncrieffs bought land up the coast from Nelson, where Perrine often reflected on the value of conserving the bush for future generations. Initially she tried to raise funds to buy land for protection, but then changed her strategy and campaigned for a national park – and soon became the main driving force behind the 1942 reservation that became Abel Tasman National Park. In 1938, she had also achieved protection for Farewell Spit, one of the nation’s most significant migrating bird sanctuaries.

Saving Manapouri

In the mid-1960s, New Zealand entered the modern environmental era with the campaign to save Lake Manapouri from the impact of a major hydropower scheme, which would have raised lake levels by several metres. The scheme was designed to provide electricity to Comalco’s aluminium smelter in Southland, as well as feeding into the national grid. The protest galvanised a commitment to protecting wilderness landscapes and prompted unprecedented civic involvement. A petition raised more than 264,000 signatures and prompted an independent investigation.

Alan Mark was a botanist at the University of Otago at the time, and his surveys of rare plants on the lakeshore, combined with Charles Fleming’s findings about birds, provided crucial arguments against the raising of the lake levels. The campaign brought previously opposing organisations – hunters and conservationists – around the same table and it prompted the first Conference on Environment and Conservation, which later lead to the formation of the environmental organisation ECO. The government made a number of concessions, including the creation of a Commission for the Environment in 1972, but it wasn’t until the National Government’s electoral defeat later that year that the long-term protection of Lake Manapouri was secured. Together with the ‘cream of the rebels’, Mark was appointed as one of the Guardians of Manapouri.

Down to one

The story of Old Blue is arguably one of New Zealand’s best known conservation stories, but it illustrates that a species can come back from the brink of extinction. In 1979, there was only one breeding pair left of Chatham Island black robins, Old Blue and Old Yellow. They were the sad remnant of a small population that had been transferred to Mangere Island, but a cross-fostering programme, led by Don Merton, meant that eggs from this pair were taken to be incubated by Chatham Island tomtits, who proved excellent step-parents. By 1990, the population had grown to more than 100 black robins, and Merton was looking for other islands to provide new homes.

Apart from the Chatham Island black robins, Merton has helped rescue more than a dozen birds, including the New Zealand saddleback, the Mauritian echo parakeet and the magpie robin in the Seychelles.

Mainland islands

The Department of Conservation is charged with the protection of New Zealand’s natural heritage, and one of its ambitious and successful projects was to set up protected areas on the mainland, rather than offshore islands, to restore habitats through intensive management of introduced pests. After about a decade in operation, all of these areas report better survival rates for threatened species such as the mohua, kōkako and kākā.

By Veronika Meduna

Medals and awards

Perrine Moncrieff: Loder Cup, CBE

Herbert Guthrie-Smith: FNZI

Alan Mark: Hutton Medal

Don Merton: UNEP Global 500 Roll of Honour

Further reading and websites

Perrine Moncrieff biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

William Herbert Guthrie-Smith biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

Herbert Guthrie-Smith, Tutira: the story of a New Zealand sheep station, Blackwood, 1921

Perrine Moncrieff, New Zealand Birds and How to Identify Them, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1957

David Young, Our Islands, Our Selves: a history of conservation in New Zealand, Otago University Press, 2004

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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