Conservation Week

The loss of New Zealand's native plant, animal and bird life has been mourned for a very long time, certainly for as long as there have been people able to record their observations.

Well over a century ago, this newspaper editorialised: "The threatened extinction of a great deal of the bird life indigenous to New Zealand has for long been a matter of regret, not only by students of natural history in general and of birds in particular, but by a very large number of people who make the bush their favourite resort and to whom there is an added charm in the presence of birds of all kinds.

"The advent of man unfortunately seems to imply the destruction of much that is innocent and beautiful, and while it is no doubt fitting and inevitable that well-tilled fields and succulent pastures should replace the unbroken soil and tangled bush, still it is a reproach to the civilisation we have brought to the ends of the earth that we cannot live and let live instead of ruthlessly destroying forms of life which can never be replaced.

"It is of daily occurrence in the shooting season to hear of the wholesale slaughter inflicted on the feathered tribe by pot-hunters calling themselves sportsmen, who go out and slay mercilessly till hundreds of birds have fallen to their guns, while many more broken and wounded creatures flutter away to die amongst the ferns and undergrowth . . .

"The secretary of the Acclimatisation Society, Mr Russell, thought within five or six years there would not be a great many of our native birds left.

"He attributes their disappearance mainly to the ravages of imported vermin, and stated that stoats and weasels were now in the heart of the bush in large numbers, where there was no other food for them but birds."

Efforts led by our earliest conservationists produced hunting regulations and bag limits, the absolute protection of native species.

The preservation efforts of innumerable voluntary and official organisations and like-minded individuals followed, but these have been chiefly superficial.

The continued destruction or modification of the few remnants of the natural environment that remain outside the national parks and the consequent impact on native flora and fauna - without taking into account the continued devastation caused by all the introduced pests as well as domestic and feral cats - means that future generations, as we do this week, will inevitably include regret in their measure of "progress".

It is hardly possible, for example, not to gain enjoyment from the visual appeal at the top of Dunedin's northern motorway of the now truncated fragment of cloud forest that once covered the higher coastal hills along the South Island's east coast, and about which the early diarists and letter-writers filled their pages.

Yet this is one of the very last remaining pieces of forested landscape that pre-dates organised human occupation.

There are probably no town landscapes left in New Zealand, after a mere 160 years or so of "civilisation", that cannot be read as an anthology of environmental left-overs, but in Otago particularly, the remnants - especially in and around the more populous Dunedin - are still sufficient as to represent a worthy legacy to future generations providing we can protect, preserve and care for them.

Such places as the Orokonui ecosanctuary, the reserves on the Otago Peninsula, the coastal waters, the harbour itself, the many small patches of forest, the wetlands and rivers, the surf beaches and sheltered inlets, and all the other non-urban but much-modified places that make up what we like to call "the environment", are the remaining fragments upon which we must pin our hopes for such a legacy.

It is in the hands of all the inhabitants of Otago whether these fragments, in all their marvellous diversity, are to survive.

Conservation Week is a valuable reminder of what we have, what we have lost, and what we stand to lose.

The image of the kiwi as our national symbol seems to be widely accepted, but how many of us contribute to its preservation, and how many companies which use the symbolic kiwi make even a token gift towards its survival? That is, perhaps one end of the scale.

But think, too, how people from a small country so distant from the centres of global power can set an example to the world by taking the gradual steps necessary to bring about improvements to the entire global environment.

There is reason enough to be optimistic, and there are many practical ways in which individuals can subscribe to the cause of conservation.