317
local Moriori Chief, Nunuku-whenua, were invaded and massacred by mainland
Maori from two kinship/clans (iwi) Ngati Mutunga and the Ngati Tama.
7
But the ecological-bioheritage self by which one might prefer to be identified in
New Zealand’s current extinction crisis is more complicated than all the combined
ethnic propensities, arrogant philosophies, condemnations, outright violence, illiteracy, and the preferred false equivalencies of innocence.
When we first set about to create a scientific reserve on Rakiura (Stewart Island),
our goals were to leave the many hundreds of acres—some of the oldest forest in the
country—utterly untouched in perpetuity. It still had a few wild roaming breeds of
bovine and some sheep, as well as 165 years-worth of other small mammalian
descendants, principally two species of rat, and possums from Australia (not
Virginia), as well as local feral cats and the rare horse. The combined, easily discernible damage to native birds, insects, possibly forest geckos, and to forest understory exceeded mere salt intrusion, evident on the wind-swept headlands from the
surrounding Faveaux Strait storms, a body of northern sub-Antarctic water separating the 674 mi
2
island—New Zealand’s third largest—from the South Island by
approximately 17 miles. Rakiura’s nearly 400 inhabitants depend almost entirely
upon ecotourism for island revenue. It is also home to the nation’s newest, 13th
national park which accounts for nearly 540 mi
2
of the island’s extant.
35.2 Rhapsodies in Green (Fig. 35.2)
And thus, it was with the honesty of pure reverie that we wrote the following passage, regarding the last two bovines in that monastic outback: “monarchs of nameless point” who roamed the “podocarp-broadleaf forest whose origins date back at
least four million years. The moisture is rich … The grasses upon which their diets
[the bovines] are free to experiment … Uncinia uncinate hooked sedge of the
Cyperaceae family; Latinate mysteries as velvety as their enunciations: Uncinias
zotovii, fine nervosa, silvestris, strictissima gracilenta, Carex gaudichaudiana, the
curly fretalis geminata, Cortaderia richardii, and so on. These are their fruits and
chocolates, all of their bread….”
They inhabit a world that orients over churned up sea, headlong into the northwesterlies. On
clear days there are Alps rearing across these great rolling whitecaps. The rains are abundant. Even the occasional snowfall, though it remains for an hour like hail miscast and
vanishes amid rainbows whose constant ephemerality marks the same turbulence of so
many seasons manifesting each day. Rainbows that strike the earth like lightning, thick
double bolts, prisms that shock the air, catapult the innocent iris … Amid forests of primeval rimu thick with ecstatic kakas and kakarikis, bell birds, keruru, fantail, brown creeper,
gray warbler … This is primary canopy with virtually no harm inherent to its rules, other
than a slightly toxic caterpillar, a stinging nettle and bush lawyer … and a very shy spider
(the katapo) down among the dunes [though we never saw one] … The cool moist arboreal
7 The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/moriori/page-4, Accessed March 28,
2020.
35.2 Rhapsodies in Green
local Moriori Chief, Nunuku-whenua, were invaded and massacred by mainland
Maori from two kinship/clans (iwi) Ngati Mutunga and the Ngati Tama.
7
But the ecological-bioheritage self by which one might prefer to be identified in
New Zealand’s current extinction crisis is more complicated than all the combined
ethnic propensities, arrogant philosophies, condemnations, outright violence, illiteracy, and the preferred false equivalencies of innocence.
When we first set about to create a scientific reserve on Rakiura (Stewart Island),
our goals were to leave the many hundreds of acres—some of the oldest forest in the
country—utterly untouched in perpetuity. It still had a few wild roaming breeds of
bovine and some sheep, as well as 165 years-worth of other small mammalian
descendants, principally two species of rat, and possums from Australia (not
Virginia), as well as local feral cats and the rare horse. The combined, easily discernible damage to native birds, insects, possibly forest geckos, and to forest understory exceeded mere salt intrusion, evident on the wind-swept headlands from the
surrounding Faveaux Strait storms, a body of northern sub-Antarctic water separating the 674 mi
2
island—New Zealand’s third largest—from the South Island by
approximately 17 miles. Rakiura’s nearly 400 inhabitants depend almost entirely
upon ecotourism for island revenue. It is also home to the nation’s newest, 13th
national park which accounts for nearly 540 mi
2
of the island’s extant.
35.2 Rhapsodies in Green (Fig. 35.2)
And thus, it was with the honesty of pure reverie that we wrote the following passage, regarding the last two bovines in that monastic outback: “monarchs of nameless point” who roamed the “podocarp-broadleaf forest whose origins date back at
least four million years. The moisture is rich … The grasses upon which their diets
[the bovines] are free to experiment … Uncinia uncinate hooked sedge of the
Cyperaceae family; Latinate mysteries as velvety as their enunciations: Uncinias
zotovii, fine nervosa, silvestris, strictissima gracilenta, Carex gaudichaudiana, the
curly fretalis geminata, Cortaderia richardii, and so on. These are their fruits and
chocolates, all of their bread….”
They inhabit a world that orients over churned up sea, headlong into the northwesterlies. On
clear days there are Alps rearing across these great rolling whitecaps. The rains are abundant. Even the occasional snowfall, though it remains for an hour like hail miscast and
vanishes amid rainbows whose constant ephemerality marks the same turbulence of so
many seasons manifesting each day. Rainbows that strike the earth like lightning, thick
double bolts, prisms that shock the air, catapult the innocent iris … Amid forests of primeval rimu thick with ecstatic kakas and kakarikis, bell birds, keruru, fantail, brown creeper,
gray warbler … This is primary canopy with virtually no harm inherent to its rules, other
than a slightly toxic caterpillar, a stinging nettle and bush lawyer … and a very shy spider
(the katapo) down among the dunes [though we never saw one] … The cool moist arboreal
7 The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/moriori/page-4, Accessed March 28,
2020.
35.2 Rhapsodies in Green