Turning an 'imposium' into a symposium

Some of the 140 people who took part in a field trip at the Lake Tekapo Scientific Reserve late last month before the Mackenzie Country Symposium at Twizel. Photo by Raewyn Peart.

Canterbury suffered the earthquake but Auckland got the bargains. Second was the Auckland-based Environmental Defence Society (EDS), with Wellington headquartered Forest and Bird, coming south to explain why the Mackenzie's working landscape must have restrictive controls slapped upon it.

Many have the impression EDS/Forest and Bird see themselves as civilising agents, coming south to teach us uncouth yokels a thing or two about environmental obligations. Job done, they utter, "Veni, vidi, vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered - before boarding their flights back north.

Afterwards, they'll laugh at how they couldn't get a decent ristretto in the High Country. These people love the Mackenzie so much, that's why they mostly live elsewhere.

So the great 2010 imposium is over. Is Federated Farmers worried about its boycott? Only that one was needed. Few in the media stopped to ask: "Does the Mackenzie need saving by North Island environmentalists or does it need saving from them?"

After the talking, farmers and farm workers will get up and go to work. That work entails a huge commitment to keeping rabbits, hieracium and wilding pines under control.

We work to generate food and fibre that is exported, helping New Zealand pay for healthcare, education and services that a first world nation expects. After the talking, we're still in the Mackenzie but those who wish to sa it aren't.

I also wonder how Auckland would react if Federated Farmers turned up in the Queen City to run a two-day symposium on saving Auckland, with urban representatives only allotted the final hour of the final day. Somehow, I think one or two noses would be put out of joint.

Many of us have an interest in the future of the Mackenzie Basin, especially the good folk who live and work there. But in all of its majesty, you cannot but help notice Meridian's electricity infrastructure and that reminds us that the Mackenzie, when all is said and done, is a modified working landscape.

Maori and Pakeha influences created the Mackenzie we know today, not nature. Forest and Bird may claim the Mackenzie is a natural desert but that's fantasy. Without farming, the Mackenzie would be condemned to a slow death by hieracium and wilding pines.

Because farmers will be forced off the land, those areas not covered in pine trees and weeds would suffer desertification after an explosion in rabbits.