Special People

We have met so many remarkable individuals and in the process have come to really appreciate the people of Aotearoa/New Zealand and their cultures.  In many ways our encounter with Ian Wilson is typical of many others, though with Ian we were able to spend more time and learn more about his life and passions. So we will tell Ian’s story at some length, though only a small piece of what we learned from him. Ian’s story stands as a representative of the many others whose stories we have not shared.

We first heard about Ian while chatting with a Department of Conservation staff person at an interpretive centre on the very tip of the South Island. We were talking about NZ trees and she then volunteered that if we were headed to the north of the North Island, we should visit her brother-in-law because “he loves to show people around the ‘bush’ behind his farm.” [Starting off, how many times has a government official you did no know referred you to a family member for an educational tour and family visit? That is NZ for you.]

A month later after a couple of e mail contacts, here we were knocking on the door at Ian and June’s farmhouse. Indeed this was a beautiful farm backing onto a national park with large Kauri trees in it. Within minutes we were into Ian’s ute (pick-up), and heading up the farm track and then over the fence into Puketi National Park. Ian spent three hours showing us about, telling stories, helping us understand the forest ecosystem and all of the plants. He has no formal training in the field, but you could have fooled me. Here’s how he started out though…

                                                                  Learning from Ian

30 years ago as a young dairy farmer, Ian and June had moved to the North because land was cheaper and they wanted a bigger farm. Within weeks of moving in, Ian called the bulldozer contractor and scheduled the guy to come in and cut, and then dose the farm acreage that was still forest. Any NZ dairy farmer (and there are lots of them) knows that everything comes down to how much grass you can grow… more grass means more milk and more income. It happened that while they were waiting for the guy to come, a neighbour came over, and heard about the plan. He was aghast, telling Ian that there were very special plants in there and then took him out to experience the forest. As the result, Ian cancelled the dozer and left the forest standing. The neighbour brought him along to a couple of Forest and Bird meetings (the big grassroots naturalist/conservation organization in NZ), and as they say, the rest is history.

While growing more and more passionate and involved in learning about and protecting the forest as a part of Forest and Bird, he simultaneousl watch the bird life disappear in the area due to invasive mammals (possums, stoats, ferrets, rats, etc.). As a volunteer, he watched the Department of Conservation respond too little, incompetently and/or too late. Ian decided that more had to be done and so he and several others founded the Puketi Forest Trust eight years ago. In the short time since then, they have raised approximately $800,000 for protection of the forest. The Trust convinced the Department of Conservation (DOC) that they could do a better and cheaper job of trapping the invasive mammals than DOC, and they have. They check 2300 rat traps and about 800 stoat and 800 possum traps over 5500 hectares. Along the way they are doing research on how to deploy traps most effectively and with different types of bait. There are 100km of trap lines. They have gotten the monitoring evidence of stoats to zero in the larger area and rats to zero in a smaller core area, but there is the constant re-invasion and need to monitor traps and population numbers. 

                                                               Ian setting a possum trap

The kiwi population has been growing at 15% a year whereas they are dropping in non-trapping areas and increasing at 9% in DOC managed areas. New Zealand Robins have been re-introduced and are growing. Each of the birds is banded and Ian keeps a check on them. We watched as he tapped on a mealy worm container and very soon a couple of robin friends turned up for a feed. As the success builds and they fundraise more, they are looking to bring back some of the other endangered bird species that once thrived in the area.

A threatened North Island Robin gets the worm

Fruiting Kie Kie

Puketi Kauri

As we wandered through the most intact Kauri forest we have seen, Ian pointed out the highlights— the smallest orchid in the world, the kie kie plants that were fruiting, a very unusual occurrence, the specific plant species that only live in association with the Kauri. Ian had brought a local elementary class up to the trails and done the research so that each kid was looking for one medicinal plant the Maori used. They found them all and were so appreciative that they invited him to their presentations back at school and presented the Trust with $700 of hard earned money from bake sales and sausage sizzles. We asked Ian how much he volunteered with the Trust… the answer was “around 40 hours a week”. Several years ago he sold the dairy herd and shifted to beef cattle because there was not enough time for his conservation work given the high time requirements of dairy farming. Everywhere we have gone we have met volunteers like Ian, working for the benefit of the community be it the human community, wildlife community, or both. They have been wonderful people to get to know. 

Special Places

Pictures from Fiordland with just a few associated words...

     Ancient Ents silently standing guard above
     Umbrellas of Fern Trees protect me
     Pitter Patter, the rain falls.

                                                        Sarah Marie... blown away by a waterfall

     Rata blooms red flower nectar
      Tuis flitter up high, gorging and gobbling
      Warbling a wobbly song

Here's a tui. If you want to hear the wobbly Tui song that is a staple in the bush (forest), go to: http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/documents/conservation/native-animals/birds/bird-song/tui-song-42.mp3
Some people say the Tui sounds like a rusty gate opening and shutting.

Balloons over Waikato

So Hamilton has the reputation in Aotearoa as a bit of a backwater (i.e., think Winnipeg in Canada). This is undeserved in our view— here is some evidence…

When we first arrived, as we were eating breakfast several mornings in a row, one or two enormous hot air balloons would float over our house each day. Puzzling but pretty cool. Well it turns out that Hamilton is a mecca for balloonists and it all comes to a height (literally) each year with the international balloon festival hosted here… ‘Balloons over Waikato’ (Waikato is our region, named for the river that runs through it)… very special. 35 enormous balloons in all! 

Notice the SUV size to get a sense of the balloon size!

One of the mornings we went down before dawn and watched some of the balloons inflate on the Commons and then take off into the black skies, using their brilliant flames to shoot up heat into the balloon to warm the air, enabling the balloon to rise into the wind and float across the city. With roughly six balloons in the sky, and beautiful music playing on the Commons, the balloonists (thanks to simultaneous radio transmission) were able to synchronize their flames to go on and off with the music… a pretty spectacular sight. 

Later the shape balloons including everyone’s favourite (a Kiwi… surprise!) launched into the daylight.

                                                That is a very big tree!

The big finale of the balloon festival is the “Night Glow”. In this case twelve mega balloons are inflated silently and simultaneously taking up the while of the enormous University rugby fields. It is pitch dark as you see the balloon shadows grow up to humongous proportions and then straighten up, still tethered to the ground, with digerydoo type music surround sound (the Awakening in Maori ritual) followed by the traditional Haka (the Challenge and Welcome) with the flames blasting forth in synchronicity to the music. 

It was magic. This was followed by 20 minutes of flames shooting up to illuminate the balloons (though the music was a bit fast for the flames). It all ended with the best fireworks I have ever seen… great flowing choreography and spectacles of colours changing over time.

Attendance at the Night Glow… 95,000 people, and only a short walk from our house (thank god we did not have to drive or park). So there you go, check out Hamilton next time you are in NZ!

Canadian Moose... In the Shadowlands?

Fiordland, the southwest corner of the South Island sticks out into the Southern Ocean toward Antarctica. It is a World Heritage Site and one of the most famous and frequently photographed portions of New Zealand. It is a huge tract of land similar to the Canadian Rockies in size. But other than one small town, Te Anau, and a couple of famous fiords and treks, where tourists come and go, there are very few people in this remote part of the world. In particular, in the southwestern part of the area, there are almost no human beings as it is virtually inaccessible unless you want to bushwack and climb through intractable rainforest for more than a week. The only real imposition of humanity are the helicopters which can go anywhere, though there is still little reason to go here as it is off the major scenic flight routes.

Are their Canadian moose out there?

This vast wild area is called the “Shadowlands” because this is a rainforest (Milford Sound gets 7 metres of rain a year) of clouds, mist and rain, with the sun breaking though occasionally. It is here, in 1910, that the New Zealand government released 10 Canadian moose with the idea of creating a herd to hunt, and attracting visitors. At first they grew in numbers, possibly as high as a 100, but then the hunters moved in and killed lots. The last undeniable photograph of several moose comes from 1953, yet many are convinced they still exist, maybe only a few. Are they hiding in the Shadowlands? One man, a wildlife biologist, Ken Tustin, has made it his life’s passion to find a living moose, and he believes they indeed exist. Fur has been identified in 2002 and a couple of years ago tree browse was found that he says by the markings, could only be from a moose, not a deer. He twice yearly sets numbers of movement sensor cameras in remote locales with only helicopter access, hoping that the camera will be triggered by the movement of a moose. So far he has seen lots of deer and a few ambiguous photos that might be moose. Hmmm. There are two movies tackling the mystery, one by Ken, and another that we saw in Fiordland by two young film makers. The verdict… Ginny thinks there are still moose, Alan is not so sure. Here’s some photos of our spectacular trip to the edge of the Shadowlands on the Kepler Track.

Moose??? But the misty Murchinson Mountains in the distance are the last wild 

refuge of the Takahe, a beautiful ground bird on the verge of extinction

                                         Sunlight in the Shadowlands

Feathered Friends— The Sequel

Back to the South Island we went just a few weeks ago to explore the southern section of the island, beaches, headlands, fiords and mountains— Aotearoa is never lacking for amazing places. Sure enough we “happened” upon a few more feathered friends.

 

Yellow Eyed Penguins… When I figured out there were penguins in New Zealand, it was a no brainer because I never envision making it to Antarctica— this was the one shot. The yellow eyed penguins are endangered, the rarest of all penguins. We figured out from the guidebooks that if you are at particular beaches an hour before sunset, that’s when the penguins tend to come ashore to feed their chicks, who hang out at the nest in the deep bush just off the shore or beach. So we turned up hoping we might catch a glimpse of a penguin running across the rocky ledges to the bush. Wrong again, there were about fifty people standing on the ledges when we arrived and there was a penguin ten meters away preening himself/herself with oil from its oil gland to keep the feathers in ship shape for tomorrow’s swimming. A Department of Conservation volunteer was on hand to monitor the people who tended to creep closer, though the penguin seemed unbothered. 

A couple of more penguins turned up out of the sea and then a “chick” waddled down from the bush hoping that a parent was going to come up and provide a regurgitated fish meal. In fact the chick was nearly the size of the adult and most of the chicks had left, but not this character (a bit on the slothful side I guess). But alas, none of the adults made a move for the chick so back in the bush went the chick. The volunteer said the chick might get a feed later or the parents may have been communicating tough love— time for the chick to get out and fish for itself.

The chick says... "Where's my supper?"

Two days later we headed up the coast to a penguin rehabilitation and research centre and protected area. It was pretty neat. We got a talk on penguin behaviour and then a tour (five of us) out into the protected area where they have visitor blinds so that folks do not disturb the penguins. All the chicks had left and the penguins there were molting, which happens one month a year. During this time the penguins have to stay on land and don’t eat. Our highlight was watching a penguin pop out of the waves and scurry up the beach into the grass… I could not believe how fast a penguin can move on land when it wants too. Very cute!

Who can you see on the beach?

While waiting for our tour at Penguin Place, we had some time to waste and we heard you could see albatrosses flying from the parking lot of the Royal Albatross Centre without even paying for the tour. Well it did not take long to see them soaring with their 9 foot wingspans. So then we figured we would check out the free museum displays… excellent… so they had us and off we went on the tour to see the albatross chicks on the nests, with parents dropping in and out to feed them. Again their was a glassed in blind so as not to disturb the birds. You have to say the chicks are cute!

It takes them nine months to leave the nest during which time they grow huge to the point that at the end the parents put them on a diet or else they wont be able to fly (they get fatter than their parents).

Even at the size of the one in the picture, the arents n longer can sit n them. Once they are ready to fly and lift off the cliff for the first time, they do not return to land for 5 years (!), circumnavigating the globe in the Southern Ocean across that time. It was amazing to watch them soar through the air.

Albatrosses are diminishing in numbers and 18 species are threatened at one level or another, all the way to endangered. The main problem is fishing boats as the birds are attracted to the fish waste, fish nets and bait hooks and in the process get caught by the hooks or nets as they go over the side. Several organizations are working hard to educate fishermen as there are a bunch of fishing techniques that reduce bird mortality. Seabird Solutions is leading the battle in New Zealand. They are having some success educating fisherman, but the illegal fishery, largely in international waters, is really damaging and accounts for 30% of all fish catches.  That is not a pretty picture. The birds are indeed amazing, well worth protecting.

History is Written by the Victors!

Since we have been here a good while, we are learning more and more about where to go to find the cool places off the beaten track. The last two holiday weekends (two Mondays off in the summer in succession… not bad) we have headed out tramping to magnificent places where the marketers have not been (nor lots of other people).

This weekend we went to Pureora, which came to our attention as it was the flash point in the 1970s for environmental protest across New Zealand against the destruction and clearcutting of native forests by the big companies. It is NZ’s equivalent to Clayoquoit Sound in BC or the tree sitting in Northern California. People protested and sat in trees to protect some of the biggest remnants in the area that were about to be cut. Only… in this case they won. They protected these trees and over the next decade pressure built and ultimately a national law was passed preventing all future cutting of native forests. The companies are still cutting and replanting the areas previously cut (agriforestry) but all existed native forests are protected… about 30% of New Zealand.

So I am not sure if you can read the fine print, but here are two NZ Department of Conservation interpretive signs heralding the protests and the end of clearcutting. I love the picture on the 2^nd sign of the big machinery destroying the forest, and this quote from it… “all this activity [destruction due to forestry practices] has left us with the diverse and fragmented landscapes of Pureora. The work of restoring some continuity to these forests and re-establishing healthy wildlife communities is the challenge for today and the future.” Wow… you would not see these sorts of signs in Canada. In fact the current history of our forests seems to be written by Irving in their greenwash TV ads. This shows there is another way and at least some folks in the world have found it…. oh and by the way the rural economy in New Zealand is not in shambles, it has not been destroyed by the logging ban, though the loggers at the time would have had you believe it. Hmmm.

This is looking up at a tree from the ground

    A wonderful trail infrastructure preserves the forest

                                                                                  Forest Regeneration

So here are a few more pictures from the weekend travels. Ginny goes "Kiwi"...

    This is the Kiwi hiking top, but where are your tan khaki shorts?

Good Kiwi hiking form... hiking up a 

stream "trail" with her hiking boots on.

Lake Taupo from the Umukarikari Ridge. Lake Taupo is the crater of the
largest volcano to blow in recorded human history (186AD). Both Rome
and China had it documented in their records based on red sunsets and
climate cooling.

Are you doing any work?

So everybody is always asking me… “Are you doing any work?” So now you get your just desserts… having to read a blog about work… It is just that it seems more fun and interesting to write about the latest wilderness tramp or eco marvel than the latest section of a food policy paper. But… I did get to go to the New Zealand Environmental Education Conference two weeks ago, which was excellent, and since a number of the folks reading this blog are generally interested in sustainability, community and/or education… here are some of the best things I harvested at the conference for your learning pleasure. Sorry, no pictures.

Enviroschools (www.enviroschools.org.nz)

Enviroschools is a pretty amazing NGO that is taking a whole school approach to education for sustainability. It pretty well dominates sustainability approaches in schools in NZ. More than 25% of the schools in New Zealand are enviroschools and working toward bronze, silver or green gold status. What is so neat is that this is a very reflective, philosophy based and student centred process of working for sustainability. Everything done in an Enviroschool is to be anchored in 5 principles:

• Empowered Students: Enable the development of skills, knowledge, confidence and experience to contribute to their communities.
• Integrate Māori perspectives.
• Learning for Sustainability:
• Sustainable Communities: Connect children and young people/tamariki and rangatahi to contribute to their communities.
• Respect for the diversity of people and cultures in our communities and world.

These principles must be enacted in four areas… involving everyone (kids, teachers, janitors, parents, community, etc.), greening of the place, greening of the curriculum experiences, and the lifestyle practices (composting, water use). How exactly the school takes the principles and applies them in the areas is up to them, but there is a rigourous self-assessment process involving interacting with an external facilitator. Ultimately the kids decide after working through an evidence based process on what they have done. Each school has to have a lead student group. Anyway, it is pretty neat and very different to the activity package, tick the box approaches in Canada. I am going to spend some time with the staff in the next few weeks, visit some schools and bring home some of the resources. I am going to buy the toolkit which is amazing in that the activities and concepts apply all the way from preschool to university (and it is a beautiful artistic presentation). Lots of great community development, empowerment, facilitation activity ideas. They also have the script we can use for next year’s solstice play (with a few adaptations)!

Steady State Economy (steadystate.org)

The concept that at the core of all our sustainability problems is that we have a world economy based on growth in a limited biosphere, which cannot support it. These are economists defining and developing ways to change the fundamental assumptions to bring about a steady state economy. There’s lots here but the briefing papers are most accessible under “Explore.”

Education for Sustainability and Environmental Education in Schools

http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Social-sciences/Education-for-sustainability

FYI here is the link to the New Zealand Depart of Education’s curriculum website on Education for Sustainability. It is funny how NS has no equivalent nor really ever pays anything more than mild lip service to Education for Sustainability in its curriculum and curriculum guidelines. Though dated, NZ also has Environmental Education curriculum guidelines: http://efs.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources-and-tools/Environmental-Education-Guidelines. The NZ school curriculum is about 50 pages whereas in Nova Scotia every high school course is about 50 pages, covering all levels. If you added all of the NS Curriculum documents together you would have at least 1000 pages, 20 times what New Zealand has. That sends a very different message about the role of the teacher and the concept of education in schools. The vision statement for the NZ Curriculum is:

"Our vision is for young people:

• who will be creative, energetic, and enterprising
• who will seize the opportunities offered by new knowledge and technologies to secure a sustainable social, cultural, economic, and environmental future for our country
• who will work to create an Aotearoa New Zealand in which Māori and Pākehā recognise each other as full Treaty partners, and in which all cultures are valued for the contributions they bring
• who, in their school years, will continue to develop the values, knowledge, and competencies that will enable them to live full and satisfying lives
• who will be confident, connected, actively involved, and lifelong learners.

 P.S. I tried to google the NS one to compare and could not easily find anything, just documents for each course or topic. Hmmm?

Design Thinking

(www.ideo.com and www.designthinkingforeducators.com)

(candychang.com)

This was an excellent talk on being innovation in the design of programming and community development initiatives. Design thinking is briefly… don’t plan much. Do some intensive framing up and research on the issues to define the question, then pull people together, brainstorm and then go try stuff and learn from failure and reflection. The idea is that folks get bogged down in long committee processes that stifle innovation… collect wild ideas, try the best ones quick and dirty and then revamp. The one liner is… “to succeed more, we need to fail more.” Some of the info is on the ideo websites. Candy Chang is an urban designer who has done a bunch of creative projects to get community members connecting to each other. Her website pictures a few of them

The Fledglings of Birds

Some folks may have seen Children of Men, an excellent movie set in the future when a section of England is the only place on earth still protected from the violence of the hordes and the ravages of climate change across the rest of planet earth. In the movie there is a huge fence to protect the last privileged humans...

So today we visited the Maungatautari Ecological Island (meaning suspended mountain or mountain of upright rock in Maori), an ancient volcano thrusting skyward in the middle of the pastureland of the Waikato, not far from Hamilton. Maungatautari is a parallel universe to Children of Men, only the hordes are the invasive mammals on the outside and the endangered species of New Zealand birds are the privileged on the inside. To protect the birds there are 47 kms of enormous metal fence (8500 3-metre metal fence posts), which resembles a fence that surrounds a maximum security prison. The holes in the fence are no more than 6 mm wide, because a baby mouse is 8 mm. Below ground the fence forms an L, 3 metres high and going a metre horizontal underground on the outside to stop digging rodents. On the outside top is a reverse overhang to stop climbers. On the very top is a solar electric wire so that if a tree falls on the wire, it shorts and automatically sends a text to the fence security person saying the fence integrity has been compromised. Security has 90 minutes to respond as video cameras along the fence line show there is an invasive mammal trying to get in every 90 minutes on average (possum, rat, stoat, ferret, etc.).

Given all of this, the 3400 hectare forested volcano is pest (mammal) free except for small populations of mice. As the result, the forests are exploding with growth and they have reintroduced populations of endangered birds that are now breeding. In a couple of cases there is only one other place in the wild where this is occurring for these species. We saw a Hihi today, of which there are believed to be only about 250 alive. They have 40 Kiwi and there were 10 new chicks this spring (your fall). Also there are a number of Kaka, an endangered North Island parrot and close relative of the Kea, the South Island mountain parrot, which is believed to be the smartest bird on earth. It is quite magical to enter through the security fence. To enter from the wide-open car park and field area, first, push a button and the metal door opens into the biosecurity holding cage. Shut the first door and you can push the button to open the second door that allows you to leave the holding cage and enter the dark rainforest full of multitudes of different plant species and birds. It is a world of pre-European contact.

 A Kaka at a feeding station (sorry, I missed the Hihi with the camera)

So what does this all mean? It is unbelievable that a non-profit organization has raised more than 20 million dollars to protect and restore this huge, magical place, and admission is free! It is an amazing tribute to what people (Pakeha and Maori) can accomplish to protect and restore nature.

               Stairway to Heaven (the Tree Tops)

                                              Looking down into the treetops (these are large trees)

There are hundreds of volunteers and an amazing human story behind it all, with both great ups and downs, full of passion, charisma, hope, faith, injustice and malevolence (that human/community story is too long and complicated to tell here). This is a dramatic feature film waiting for a filmmaker (Evan?). Shall we call it the Fledglings of Birds? Of course then one has to scratch one’s head and think that all this has to be done to protect an ecological island against the idiocy of colonialism and human stupidity. The mammals are here because the British purposefully brought them. They felt that Aotearoa was uncivilized and undeveloped. It needed to have mammals to be more like “home”… hmm, now is it coincidental that in Children of Men the last bastion of a “civilized” and privileged lifestyle was protected behind metal fences in England?

P.S. To learn more about Maungatautari, check out www.maungatrust.org. Read the news links on the recent introduction of North Island Robins and Kokaka.

One of hundreds of volunteers showing off a mouse tracking sheet 

which monitors population size. The tracking ink sheet goes in a 

dark tube with bait and the mice run through to get the food. 

Population estimates are based on the percent of tubes tramped 

through on a given night