Keith ChappleTitle: “The
problems besetting conservation: What can we do?”
Mar
Lodge, Private Bag, Kakahi, via Taumarunui and Royal Forest & Bird Protection
Society, P.O. Box 631, Wellington Email:
chapplek@xtra.co.nz |
|
Talk
Keith Chapple, Forest and Bird. |
Abstract New Zealand’s indigenous heritage is in crisis. The facts are as well known as they are deplorable. Let our much beloved national bird, the kiwi, speak for all. The kiwi is sliding toward extinction. The responsibility is ours. What is Forest & Bird? For whom do they speak? Why do they do it? Forest & Bird has a policy that acknowledges the
vital place the Treaty of Waitangi has in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We support its spirit subject to the
protection of the indigenous biota.
We want to work co-operatively with Mäori by supporting and fostering
awareness amongst the wider Mäori community of the changing needs of nature
conservation. Objective: Forest & Bird and the Mäori community
should continue to explore avenues where they can work together such as the
recent Kererü launch. The Moral
Imperative: What is a good and a bad thing? What constitutes a moral act? What constitutes an immoral
act? Principle: Accepting we have imperfect knowledge; as a society we cannot condone wilfully or by omission an act
that can be categorised as immoral. The complexity
of the problem: Conservation management in New Zealand is quite different
than most countries because of the huge variety of imported pests feasting
off our natural heritage. Complexity of
such magnitude that there is a danger we might try and save little bits of
it, rather than go for the full doctor.
Objective: We must try harder. We can do better. “And even if my troop
fell thence vanquished, yet to have attempted a lofty enterprise is still a
trophy”… The complexity
of fixing the problem:
Conservation management in New Zealand is about killing things. Sounds simple. But it isn’t. Knock
off one pest; another springs up to
claims the open space. The agents of
decline are everywhere. The needle in
the haystack is but a trifle in comparison.
A huge range of skills, knowledge and cultural sensitivity is required with a national overview, adequate resources
and a good strategic direction. Objectives: Management by Research. Take calculated risks. Without risk-taking there can only be
stagnation, the triumph of entropy and eventual extinction. Adopt a no
regrets policy. · Explore the avenues for a semi-formal mechanism to maintain relations and work on matters of mutual interest · Government to be pressured into vastly speeding up Treaty of Waitangi settlements. Further delay could be an injustice in itself. · The big question: What can we all do to help nature? Not just us here, but all of us. · If we don’t help nature, the aspirations of most people or organisations at this Hui will not be capable of fulfilment. |
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Talk
Ka
tangi te tïtï, ka tangi te kaka, ka tangi hoki ahau. Tihea mauri ora.
Before I start, I really want to acknowledge the
Rakiura Tïtï Committee. I was down here
a couple of years ago and had the privilege of meeting those people over on the
island. It’s rather great to catch up
with them again.
The theme of what I am going to talk about here is
essentially rolled around one phrase: “Spiritual contentment and future
prosperity depends on preserving the environment.”.
I want to explain something about Forest and Bird,
and to describe very briefly the biodiversity crisis that New Zealand’s
currently facing. The going then will
get a little bit heavier because I am going to discuss the moral imperative in
the style of Socrates. I want to canvass the complexity of the environmental
problem that New Zealand is facing and how we can fix that problem. I also want to talk near the end about some
calculated risks. I will conclude by
asking a bunch of questions.
More commonly known as Forest and Bird, the proper
name for our society is The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society. We were formed in 1923. That was something like 77 years ago. It is a large national environmental group
and its involved in a wide range of environmental work. We are registered as a Incorporated Society
with charitable status. Membership goes
up and down, but it is settled around 40,000 members spread among 54 branches
around New Zealand.
We are not, as some people think, a Government
Department. We do not want to be a
Government Department and we are not part of the Department of
Conservation. We are an independent
body and we’re reliant essentially on the generosity of our members and the
public for our funding.
Our purpose in life, which was the purpose that we
started off with in 1923, is to preserve and protect the indigenous plants and
animals and natural features of New Zealand for the benefit of the public,
including future generations. So our
focus has always been on the indigenous species. Naturally, there are times when we seek to protect the plants and
animals that might have been introduced into New Zealand, but our primary focus
is on the indigenous biota. This is
because we believe that the kiwi and the kaka, kereru, kea, rata, rimu, red
moki, pohutukawa, yellow eyed penguin, mud fish, morepork, giant kokopu, and a
whole lot more besides, are what make New Zealand unique. That is because such a high proportion of
this country’s biota are not known elsewhere.
New Zealanders have a special duty to protect and preserve the living
things that have made much of this country so special and so precious to all of
us.
It is fair to say, we are a fairly large
organization. Because of that, we have
to draft a whole range of policies. We
have policies covering all sorts of things. We also have a policy in relation
to our working relationships with Mäori.
We want to work co-operatively with Mäori and by doing that, we hope to
advance the protection and preservation of the indigenous plants and animals.
Forest and Bird acknowledges the vital price of the
Treaty of Waitangi in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
We want to support not only the Treaty itself, but its spirit of
partnership and all of those things that have come out of the Treaty and some
of the discussions that I have been listening to over this weekend.
One my objectives for coming to this hui was to
explore ways and means whereby Forest and Bird, and Mäori in particular, can
work together. We want to work for the betterment of conservation and the
environment generally. Of course the
advantages of team work are very well known.
A good example of that team work is in fact the Kereru Project that
Kevin Prime was talking about earlier in this hui. This is in Northland, at Motatau. We launched in partnership with the Mäori people up in the far
North, or the mid North, bilingual publicity material and other material aimed
at protecting and saving the kereru.
It is not an understatement to say that New
Zealand’s indigenous heritage is in crisis.
It is not really necessary to parade the facts here so I do not intend
to. The facts are as well known as they
are deplorable. It is to our national
shame that we are in this situation.
But it is useful to have some sort of a yardstick to demonstrate the
magnitude of this problem. I am going
to let our national bird, the kiwi, speak for all of the biodiversity in New
Zealand.
I was phoned by Ronda Cooper to ask if I would
attend this conference five weeks ago.
Since that date 420 kiwi died in New Zealand. On average, and I have averaged this out over the year, 12 kiwi
die every day. That’s equivalent to
something in order of about 4000 a year.
The population is halving every decade.
If we go back a thousand years, that is not very long ago, there were
over 12 million kiwi in New Zealand.
The data that we have tells us that there is something in the order of
about 55 thousand left. That sounds a
lot. But there were over 110 thousand
just 10 years ago. The surviving population
is very elderly so we can expect a mass die off around the country. That die off will occur sooner, rather than
later. I am talking here of our
mainland island populations. There is
in fact a very grave danger that the kiwi will become extinct on the mainland,
certainly within our life times. All
that we can hope for in this scenario is birds remaining on just a few offshore
islands, and a few museum relics of kiwis around the country. There may be about five or six such areas,
but no kiwi anywhere else. This is our
national bird. There is no question
that all of the data that we have tells us that the kiwi is sliding towards
extinction.
The now Minister of Conservation, Sandra Lee, sent
me a letter about 18 months ago at which time she was still in the
opposition. She said very succinctly that
if we can not save the kiwi in New Zealand, what hope have we got for the rest
of New Zealand’s biodiversity. If we
can not save our national bird, can we save anything? Is there any hope at all?
Now the Minister’s question raises quite a few other questions and I
want to ask you just three of them. Do
we, as a country, care about that?
Whose responsibility is it to fix this problem? And the last question -
Could we live with the international disdain and shame at home if the kiwi were
to die off?
For myself, I think that we do care. The responsibility for the fixing of the
problem is very clearly our
responsibility. Can we live with
international disdain and shame at home?
No, I do not think we can. I
think that it would ruin us in our minds if we were to allow our national bird
to become extinct, to all intents and purposes.
I want to now talk now about the moral issues
involved here and I am going to talk about them in the style of Socrates. For those of you who want to have a sleep,
this is the time to have it. But
according to Greek moral thought, and Socrates in particular, what I am going
to talk about here are actions. An
action is describable as “good” if it is conducive to a morally commendable
end. And an action is commendable insofar
as it is conducive to happiness. Greeks
termed everything in terms of whether you are either happy or sad - the actual
Greek was pain and pleasure but it relates to happiness and sadness.
Conversely, an action that is conducive to sadness
is not a commendable act. Now, when you
start to look at these questions, you have to take in other doctrines in moral
thought. A fundamental doctrine of
Socrates is that virtue is knowledge.
That is to say that in all cases of voluntary actions, knowing what is
good, is a necessary condition for doing what is good. Now, that thesis asserts that no one who
knows what is right willingly does wrong.
When somebody does something bad, it cannot be that they do so thinking
that it is bad. They do it thinking it
is good. For to do what they think is
bad is the equivalent of doing what they think will have harmful consequences
or the equivalent to doing something that they think will make them miserable
and unhappy.
I want to test that thesis right now. I will return to the kiwi. Hands up everybody who would be miserable,
unhappy or just plain sad to see the mainland kiwi become extinct. Right, okay. Well, after that highly scientific test, we can all assume that
no one willingly wishes us to be unhappy.
If the kiwi were to die off, we would all be unhappy about that. So no one wishes to do what they think is
bad.
But Socrates goes further than that. He goes on to say that no one voluntarily
pursues what is bad (or what is thought to be bad) because it is not in human
nature to do so. If we take that to
mean what Socrates intended it to mean, then no one willingly does what they
either know or believes to be wrong.
People instinctively want to do the right thing.
I want to demonstrate this. Let us just suppose that you are walking
along a track in a National Park and you can see on the track two or three
invertebrates walking across the track.
So you lift up your size 14 boot -
[stomp] - end of invertebrate.
This is a bad thing to do. I
mean you shouldn’t do this. I know you
did that as a witting act. You knew
that you were going to kill these little creepy crawlies and you did it
deliberately. It is a bad thing to
do. It is therefore an immoral thing to
do because you did it wittingly. But
let us suppose that you were walking along the track, say the Tongoriro
Crossing, for example. In the course of
that track, you might have killed maybe 10 thousand creepy crawlies, one way or
the other. You just did not know that
they were all over the place. Some of
them are so small, you can not see them.
By the end of your walk, you think, my god, I have killed 10 thousand of
God’s creatures. That is still a bad
thing to do. No question about that
because we ought not to kill God’s creatures.
But we did not do it deliberately.
We did not know they were there.
You did not walk around them, you couldn’t actually, there were too many
of them. Therefore, you can not be said
to be acting immorally in doing that.
This is all actually leading somewhere. What I am saying here, and what Socrates is
saying, is that a wrong action is an action done in ignorance of what is
right. But the ability to do the right
thing is limited by the force of many external factors. The question was put to me the last time I
mentioned this: Some-one asked: “What about the madman who goes along and
kills someone with a machete and enjoys doing it. Is that okay?” I passed
on that question! But you have to
accept that in all moral thought or actions that we do, there is the element of
chaos. Chaos exists in human behaviour,
just as it does in science.
The difference between moral behaviour and the
practice of what we might call professional skills is quite important. Assuming
that you have a desire to save the kiwi, for example. The desire to do that depends exclusively on possession of an
expert technique for achieving it. If
you can not achieve what it is you want to do, then you can not be said to be
acting immorally by doing nothing.
I want to talk now about the complexity of the
problem that we face in New Zealand.
New Zealand has developed a very unique terrestrial biota and the
reasons for that are fairly well known.
We split off from Gondwanaland quite a few million years ago and our
whole biota developed in isolation. The
evolutionary distinctiveness and ecological significance that we have in New
Zealand make these islands a very, very important biodiversity centre, not only
in the South Pacific, but world wide.
That biological heritage has been sorely depleted since humans first
arrived in these islands. Not only the
humans came, but a whole pile of alien species came with them.
Conservation management in New Zealand is very
complex. It is far more difficult in
New Zealand than it is, say in the United States of America. There are some other countries that have
similar problems to ours, e.g. Madagascar, Hawaiian Islands, some parts of
islands just off the American Coast. The
reason we have these huge problems is that when people first came into New Zealand,
they brought in a huge variety of exotic animals and plants. What we need to realise, of course, is that
the biota that we have in New Zealand evolved in the absence of these
predators. Therefore, they do not have
an adequate protection against them.
Lets go back to the kiwi. The kiwis greatest threat is the mustelid family - stoats, weasels and ferrets. That is followed closely by dogs, cats,
rats, possums, deer, goats and wallabies.
The latter do not eat kiwi but they damage its habitat. Saving the kiwi is actually about killing
these alien animals. In fact,
conservation management in New Zealand is mainly about killing things, whereas
conservation management overseas is quite, quite different. That’s a very unpalatable difference for
us. No one really likes to go out and
kill animals. I suppose if we put the
doctrine of Socrates against this dilemma, we would have quite a lot of ethical
and moral problems to resolve. To save
one species, we have to kill other animals.
Conservation management is so complex that it
requires a national overview. You have
to get lots and lots of information.
You need lots of science. You need
intensive ecologically-based long-term planning. You need to be looking at conservation management 50 years out. What are the objectives that you want to
achieve 50 years from now? What do we
have to do today to achieve those objectives in 50 years time?
You also need a lot of cultural sensitivity. One of the things that this hui is about, is
those cultural issues. We have got to
build cultural sensitivity and cultural knowledge into conservation
management. We have to build folk
knowledge into conservation management.
I am not going to describe folk knowledge, but it is the knowledge that
exists all around the country in pockets here and there. Some fella where I live, for example,
Manulalla is an Indian. His family has
lived in Kakahe for 150 years I think.
That Manu is a huge mine of information about the local ecology. But he does not have any degrees or anything
of that nature.
The complexity of fixing conservation problems is so
huge that it is very easy to feel inadequate and helpless about it. Once you start to feel inadequate and
helpless, then you start to fall into the trap of saving just little bits of
it. And we might refer to those little
bits as representative samples.
I am going to finish here by asking a series of
questions. Do we, as a country, New
Zealand, want to turn our backs on 90% of our biological diversity on the grounds
that it is too hard? I do not expect
any answers to this one. I’m simply
asking the question. According to
Socrates, if we did do that, that act would probably be immoral on our part,
collectively as a nation. Because it is
a witting act, we deliberately set out not to do something. If you are only going to save 10%, the other
90% has to swim for itself. If we are
unhappy about that, put your hands up.
Therefore, it makes us unhappy.
It is, therefore, an immoral act.
The Socratic thinking is actually quite simple.
The other question is - do we know how to fix the
problem? If we really do not know how
to fix it, then there is nothing we can do.
We just have to sit back. We can
say, well it is a bad thing, we do not like it, but at least it is not immoral
because Socrates had concluded that ignorance of what is right is sufficient
explanation for doing what is wrong.
This means that we have to essentially explore every possible avenue to
fix conservation problems.
And to quote something from King Harry’s Christmas
day by Shakespeare, “Even if my troop
fell vanquished, yet to have attempted a lofty enterprise, it is still a
trophy,”. To do that, I want to ask
another question. Is it a fanciful
suggestion that without calculated risks there will only be stagnation, the
triumph of entropy and eventual extinction?
One of the reasons I came here is to talk to
people. I want to engage in the subject
matter that we are to talk about. I
want to exchange ideas. I want to
listen. But the question I also really want to ask is, “How can the knowledge
and the general comradeship and the shared experience of this weekend be spread
further?” We want more people involved
in the conservation effort. How can
this group of people, gathered here at this weekend, persuade the rest of New
Zealand to get involved? We need to get
everybody working to save New Zealand.
Discussion
Question/Comment
(John Purey-Cust, Forester)
Twelve or 15 years ago, I turned on Morning Report
or whatever it was called then, to hear one of your employees say, “...I don’t
mind if, there’s plenty of places where Mäori can plant trees but if they plant
them on their own land and with the help of any Foreign ratbag, I will shaft
them.” They did. He didn’t. As a result of that statement, no Mäori
organisation, and there’s some very large ones, will have anything to do with
the New Zealand Accord and they are at the moment, holding up the development
of sustainable management standards simply because the Accord is being cited as
a platform for those standards. Have you taken any steps to remedy that
attitude, not only for Mäori but also for the other people?
KC - To remedy what? I can’t answer the question from 15 years
ago because I didn’t hear it.
JPC - Well it continues to this
day. Autocratic and isolated attitudes
to problems without discussion, without respect for other opinions.
KC - Well I suppose the best way
I can answer that question is by the fact that I am here. That’s the best way that I can answer it, I
think. I can’t answer for what happened
15 years ago. I certainly wasn’t the
president of the Society then. The
issues you raise are generally those of communication, of exchanging the ideas
that I talked about. If we want to spend a whole pile of time revisiting the
past, sometimes that’s a good thing to do.
I came down here to this hui with an attitude of taking a fairly short
look back and a long look forward. I think that the Society does indeed want to
work with sector groups, and we do that with a lot of sectors around the
country. The Forest Owners Association
is just one of them. We did indeed sign
the Forest Accord with the Forest Owners Association. We signed Principles of Forest Management with that same
association. The issue you raise is the
vetting process, isn’t it, of sustainably managed forests and what have
you. Kevin Smith is our main person who
talks with the Forest Owners Association. He’s been dealing with that in
Wellington for some time. I know
there’s an ongoing process of negotiation and consultation. One of the issues that arose was the issue
of giving certificates to plantation forests.
This was an international move so Forest and Bird would essentially be
giving its okay to plantation forests overseas which weren’t really plantation
forests. They were the indigenous
forests of overseas and so it is a matter of interpretation. We see in New Zealand plantation forests are
where pine trees have been planted, whereas the indigenous forests should have
been protected.
Question/Comment (Shaun Weaver)
Kia ora. In
my understanding of a lot of environmental issues, often the causes of environmental
degradation are social and political and economic which means that it stands to
reason that solving the problems of biodiversity often means walking down a
path of social, political and economic resolutions. So if indeed a social injustice was contributing to environmental
degradation, would you see remedying that social injustice as a legitimate path
to walk in order to achieve the conservation goal at the end?
KC - I think this is a matter of
perspective. Forest and Bird’s conservation organisation is not a social
engineering organisation. You don’t set
out to change its social behaviour to that degree. But I would certainly want to change social behaviour when it
comes down to the use and consumption of raw materials and things of that nature. I think that perhaps your question is aimed
too low. It is not a matter of choice
anymore as to whether or not we save the planet or we save New Zealand. This is an imperative. We must do it. The social issues that you are talking about are nothing if we do
not resolve the conservation problems of New Zealand and the conservation
problems of the world. They are far too
pressing. I think it’s a matter of
perspective.
SW - I think you have
misunderstood the question. The
question is that - if to achieve the conservation goal that you want, you need
to first solve a social injustice along the way to achieving that, do you then
work on the social injustice.
KC - I do not understand the
question. What social injustice?
SW - Ok I’ll put it another
way. If a group of people were in a bus
and they were in enemy territory and they were trying to keep quiet because
they needed to remain concealed and a baby in the bus was crying. Would you
blame and punish the baby or would you look at trying to change the conditions
that made the baby cry?
KC - I have got to say, you
really have got me flunked. I simply do
not understand the point that you are getting at.
SW - I think you have answered my
question.
Question/Comment (Jim Fyfe, Kiwi Conservation Club Co-ordinator in
Dunedin)
Kia ora tatou. Kia ora Keith. My question’s quite simple. Do you consider it is morally right to
protect indigenous culture?
KC - Yes I would think protecting
any culture is a morally good thing to do, simply because not protecting it
would make people unhappy and sad, so therefore it would become immoral not to
make that effort.
JF - So, do you believe there’s a
moral obligation to do everything that you can to protect an indigenous
culture?
KC - No, I didn’t say that. There is a moral obligation, I think, to do
things that are right. Now, that’s
really what I was saying. Now if you
want to put that up against the whole range of other issues and put those
questions, are people going to be unhappy, miserable, sad, if you don’t do
that? So if you had an indigenous
culture which was sliding towards extinction, and a great many have over the
centuries, you should try to save it.
It would that have been a moral thing to do, a good act to do. Apply that to today’s thinking. Do you want
to save the culture of the Mäori people?
Yes of course you should. And to
not try and do that, to not make every attempt to do that would be immoral in
terms of Socratic thought.
Question/Comment (David Blair)
Kia ora. I
work for the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust but I have also had a conservation
interest over the last 25 years. I
would like to emphasise a couple of things that are important to me. One, the kiwi is an important icon for
me. I’d hate to think that, like the
Aussies, we had to find something to represent us that was not entirely
indigenous. So we have got to save the
damn kiwis. The Americans had trouble
with the bald eagle and they threw a few dollars at it and managed to keep it
there. Imagine the Americans having a
magpie or something as an icon. It
wouldn’t be very nice. So we have got
to think that way. The immoral thing
that is happening in this country at the moment is we can spend six hundred
million dollars on boys playing with boats.
If we had the Americas Cup money for our species, we would have solved
that problem probably by now. We have
really got our priorities all wrong as a nation. I was talking to the Minister of Conservation the other night and
she’s keen to save the kiwi. So I guess now is the time to really push and get
half a billion, if that’s what it takes to kill the stoats and ferrets and
weasels and possums and goats. I was a
bit astounded to hear Richard Holdaway, who’s an eminent palaeontologist talk
about the demise of New Zealand birds.
He started with the moa, they went out in 40 years from maybe 1360 to
1400 and the predator there, of course, was man. They went quite quickly.
The kiwi’s hanging on a bit longer. But the models show us that we are
not going to see them still here in our lifetime if we let things go on the way
it is at the moment. In fact maybe
someone said 12 years for the kiwi in the wild. I think it’s time for all of us
now to kick and scream and do something.
I’m sure those kids in schools don’t know about this. They think the kiwi’s going to be there
forever. We have got to do the
work. If we don’t, the alternative is
like for Socrates, to take the hemlock.
[laughter]
KC -I don’t know that I need to answer
that but I’m not drinking the hemlock! [laughter] But I think you do put your finger on a very important problem
and that is the amount of money that is spent, not just in New Zealand, but
world-wide on the armaments of the world.
I’m not sure of the figures now, but I know that 10 years ago (1991) 17%
of the world’s GDP goes towards weapons and weaponry. If we cut the guns out, we could save the planet quite easily.
Question/Comment (Doug McPhail)
Kia ora. I
represent the Mäori Trustee in respect of quite a number of many thousands
hectares of Mäori Forests. I am a
little bit concerned here, I’m afraid.
I’m concerned about the relationship between Mäori and Royal Forest and
Bird Society and I’m concerned about the relationship between the Society and
quite a number of the populace as well.
I was also disturbed by the use of Socrates in a fairly, I think perhaps
lighthearted way. There is a philosophical question here. It’s not a simple one. Confusing it with the
concepts of good and bad which are never absolute, makes it very difficult. But
I would like to talk about a practical question. Somewhere, the Forest & Bird Society seems to have lost its
way to many people. It seems to have
been moved from the Society we remember as children in school as a Society that
was dedicated to but not obsessed with the preservation. And I talk about
preservation of what is, not the conservation of what is. It's not a question of putting something in
a glass case and looking at it.
Sometimes its possible to use things such as forests quite reasonably
and well, particularly if it is a private forest. We have 23% of New Zealand land covered by native forest in the
conservation estate. Now that is
extraordinary for any country and I fully support that. So do I think many Mäori. What they do object to is the absolutely
inflexible attitude that Forest and Bird takes to the use of Mäori resources in
a reasonable way which would be sustainable in the concept which they view the
world. They view the Society as being
dictatorial and totalitarian in trying to tell them what they should do with
private land that they own and they say “how would you like it if someone came
and told you what to do with your backyard.”
So I think there is a lot of work the Society has to do to bridge that
gap. And I’m very concerned about whether or not this moral principle is part
of the Society’s constitution because the world is littered with organisations
such as this which use moral principles for purposes which are very sensitive. So I would rather have a simple organisation
dedicated to conservation and promoting it wherever they could and trying to
persuade Government, rather than one which is trying to tell people what they
should do with their own private land.
Thanks very much Sir.
Question/Comment (Hori Parata, Ngäti Wai)
The New Zealand Government has made probably all our
native birds absolutely protected and yet they do not protect habitat, like
trees. Do you think it is reasonable
for the Government to do something like that?
My second question relates to birds on the ground. The Conservation Act tells us about how
endangered kiwi are, and yet we have a Local Government Act that allows
subdivisions to be pushed in their face.
Do you think that’s a reasonable response from the Government as well?
KC - I totally agree with you,
that you need an ecosystem management approach. If we have a good ecosystem with the birds and all of the other
things that live in the forest, species will thrive. So ecosystem management
clearly is preferable to single species management, but this is very difficult
because of the complexity of New Zealand’s biota. Forest and Bird, actually spend a lot of time in resource
management work in trying to get controls over subdivisions. Indeed, something like I think about 30 or
40% of the Society’s total expenditure in any given year is aimed at that
issue. Clearly we would prefer that the
natural ecosystems were not damaged anymore. But the Government has got an Act
called the Resource Management Act which permits a whole range of things
provided it does not adversely affect the environment. You could say that you have to make
allowances, and that’s invariably what happens. You mentioned 23% indigenous forest cover left in New
Zealand. That is very good, but it is
not as good as Japan which has got something like 65%, and they have got 140
million people in Japan. And we are
only about two acres bigger than them.
So clearly we do not want to see further encroachment into the natural
areas in New Zealand. As a Society, we
do not believe that that’s sustainable and we would like to see encroachment
stopped - but it still continues.
Question/Comment (Te Kahui Iti, Te Tahu o Ngäti Whatua)
Tënä koe Keith, I’d just like to make a comment about
the philosophy that you keep bringing up about Socrates and whoever those total
strangers are, manuhiri tuarangi, whatever you want to call them. Even when you are speaking about them, they
are present here. In the words of our
own people, our own ancestors, we have our philosophies also. I’d also like to
make a comment to the gentleman over here who said that 15 years ago your
society's attitude was against Mäori.
That is one of the reasons why Mäori attitude is against policies,
rules, organisations, whatever you want to call them, that some people are
making on our behalf. And, isn’t it
strange that in the education system, the teachers are teaching our children
that the moa went extinct from this country because Mäori burnt the bush to
grow their kumara or make their agricultural gardens. That is not quite correct
and not what we are trying to do today.
Yet I don’t hear organisations such as yours admitting this, that it
could be not quite correct. As far as
the kiwi is concerned, Mäori consider kiwi to be a taonga. And would you
willingly destroy a taonga? I don’t think so.
I’d just like to hear your answer from the question that was asked: what
is Forest and Bird doing to close that gap and change that attitude towards
Mäori? Kia ora.
KC - I give my same answer. I’m here.
I have come here specifically because I want to be here to talk to Mäori
people. Yes I do indeed head up a large
organisation. We had a workshop earlier
and the findings of that workshop are going to be brought back. One of the issues that was raised there was,
What can we do to break down these barriers?
The finding was that we should get the leaders of these organisations to
get together and talk to each other.
And my answer to your question essentially is that I am here to talk and
to listen. I don’t know if that’s what
you want to hear but that is indeed what I’m here for.