Another report: Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, the Implementation Plan. As someone who pays attention, I have about lost track of all the government reports on the environment that have come out of late. There are reports on reports, reports on court cases, but all are basically saying much the same thing - the environment is in ongoing decline, if not collapse. It is not easy to determine how all the reports hang together or what they are expected to achieve. There are more reports on the horizon: Resource Management Act, Conservation and Wildlife Acts, National Parks Act, Trade in Endangered Species Act, to name a few. Nor can we do any of these reforms in isolation from the rest of the world. We must take into account t he UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous People. Even for the layperson passionate about the natural world, it is pretty near impossible to keep up
Greytown, Te Hupenui, is my turangawaewae, the place where I stand, the place where I was born. Wellington and the Wairarapa are where my family settled in the nineteenth century. My ancestors walked the streets of Wellington, Pahiatua, Masterton and the shores of Lake Wairarapa, as I do now. Scientists report, from the evidence of pollen grains, that before humans arrived here, 85-90% of New Zealand, including the Wairarapa, was covered with forest. Grassland or shrubland occurred, as it does now, on river terraces subject to regular flooding, frost-prone valley floors, steep cliffs, and active sand dunes. Outside these limited areas the forest cover was unbroken. In this forested country, the moa roamed, its only predator the great Haast eagle. Evidence suggests that m oa nested in the dunes around the Wairarapa coast and under high rock ledges. On my sister’s farm, near the Mangatainoka river, when digging out drains, they would regularly recover moa bones, some of w