Back to the Future

The only land mammals were tiny bats, leaving birds to fill the niches that mammals normally fill. Takahe grazed like sheep, moa were our deer, tiny wrens ran on the forest floor like mice, and kiwi were our badger.

In his book, ‘Nga Uruora: The Groves of Life - Ecology and History in a New Zealand Landscape’ (1995), New Zealand ecologist and historian, Geoff Park, describes the New Zealand that would have greeted early white settlers. He quotes Charles Heaphy, renowned explorer, who visited the Hutt Valley in 1839 as a 19-year-old.

‘I remember the enormous number of waterfowl frequenting the mouth of the Hutt River. Cormorants, ducks, teal, oyster catchers, plovers, sand-pipers, curlew, and red-legged waders, were there in pairs, detachments and masses, and so tame it was slaughter, rather than sport to shoot them.

From the pa we pulled up the Waiwhetu River, which there had lofty pine trees [kahikatea] on its banks. The various bends were very beautiful and secluded, and seemed to be the home of the grey duck and teal, and numerous other wild fowl…As seen from the ship, or the hills, a lofty pine wood appeared to occupy the whole breadth and length of the Hutt Valley, broken only by the stream and its stony margin. This wood commenced about a mile from the sea, the intervening space being a sandy flat and a flax marsh. Of the larger birds, the kokako, or crow, the rail, pukeko, pigeon, kaka and huia were numerous in their respective localities or feeding grounds. Of a night might be heard the booming, or ‘drum’ of the bittern…’

As people cleared the land, and the warm-blooded pests we brought with us invaded the forests, living networks collapsed and species simply vanished.

The hopeful future

Today, in places, the tide is slowly beginning to turn again in nature’s favour. Intense pest and predator control by community groups and government agencies is creating sanctuaries free of stoats, rats, cats, dogs and possums.

One such restoration project is lead by the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust, on a bush-clad mountain in the Waikato. Its aim is to return the forest’s life force by filling it to capacity with native birds, insects, reptiles, frogs and other wildlife.

With most of the warm-blooded pests now gone from Maungatautari, the dawn chorus is returning. Takahe, kiwi, kaka and the native fish, kokopu, have been reintroduced to two pest-free enclosures. The first kiwi chick to hatch on Maungatautari in more than 100 years took its first steps in 2007.

As the forest’s health returns, a large number of plants, insects, frogs, skinks, geckos, tuatara, bats and 23 bird species that disappeared from the area will be reintroduced. Find out more about the Trust at its website.