David Young, Our Islands, Our Selves: A History of Conservation in New Zealand. University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 2004. Hardback. 298 pages. $59.95. ISBN 1-877276-94-4.
Reviewed by Chris Maclean.
I have looked forward to this book for some time. Before its publication, deducing the history of conservation involved consulting numerous books. Now, for the first time, David Young presents the story in one volume. Our Islands, Our Selves is all the more useful for the author’s courage in venturing boldly where more cautious historians might have feared to tread, confidently charting conservation up to the present day and speculating on its likely future. The section on the period since the Second World War, which makes up more than one third of the book, is a compelling account of recent conservation trends and the personalities who have harnessed them to considerable effect. For this alone, many people will welcome this book.
The popularity of conservation has been recognised by the publisher, the University of Otago Press. It deserves congratulations and commercial success for presenting this book so attractively with hard covers, dust jacket and high-quality art paper that allows colour reproduction of illustrations, integrated throughout with the relevant text. Drawn from a wide range of sources, the illustrations enliven the text and undoubtedly broaden the book’s appeal. Only a few scattered photos fail to meet the generally high standard that makes Our Islands, Our Selves so enjoyable.
This history of conservation begins with a description of the pre-human ecosystem, the benchmark against which the subsequent impact of humans is measured. This is not an easy task. Fortunately Young is equal to the challenge, and his account is easier to understand because the text is divided into sections, each with a succinct heading. Shaded boxes (or ‘sidebars’) illuminate additional detail without detracting from the flow of the narrative. These design innovations should make Our Islands, Our Selves useful to researchers and more accessible to the general reader.
Young then describes how Maori gradually developed conservation practices as a result of extinction of species by excessive hunting and environmental degradation, especially fire. The account suggests that Maori were responsible for almost as much forest clearance as the Europeans, whose sins against the landscape are well known. In the past, David Young has written evocatively of Maori and their relationship with the land (for example the Whanganui River and environs in his book Woven by Water ). In Our Islands, Our Selves he again demonstrates his understanding of Maori culture. With the arrival of Europeans, Young’s storytelling becomes more assured. Their rapacity, allied with relative technological sophistication, quickened the pace of destruction and extinction. As in earlier chapters, this sad story is well illustrated with drawings and paintings.
Our Islands, Our Selves moves fast. By page 80, one third of the way through the book, we are in the mid-nineteenth century, the zenith of European environmental destruction. However, a dawning realisation of the need to conserve at least something of indigenous species and landscapes prompted protests by early conservationists such as Thomas Potts, and later the concern of politicians such as Julius Vogel, who was responsible for the New Zealand Forests Act in 1874. Young emphasises the underlying pragmatism of official efforts to preserve forests, which were saved to protect lowland farming areas and for later exploitation rather than for their intrinsic natural value.
By the twentieth century conservation meant the preservation of scraps of scenic forest (often at the expense of Maori owners) and on island sanctuaries the unequal struggle to protect dwindling bird species from introduced predators. In the second half of the book the pace slows and more detail of people and places provides colour and insight. Tireless advocates for conservation such as Forest and Bird’s Val Sanderson and Pérrine Moncrieff come to life, as do the species and landscapes they sought to protect.
By the time Our Islands, Our Selves reaches the 1960s, David Young is writing as much from personal experience as from his extensive reading. He chronicles in remarkable detail the numerous campaigns, conferences and legislation that shaped current attitudes to conservation. Well known names are fleshed out as personalities (I especially enjoyed the portrait of Charles Fleming) and the social and economic trends of the post-war period are drawn with verve. I found this section compelling; so I suspect did the author, who devotes more space to the last 50 years than to any other period.
The emphasis on personalities is bold, given that many are still living. There are also anonymous conservationists whose contributions should not be forgotten, the numerous volunteers who have initiated a quiet revolution in recent years. Unrecorded, for instance, are the members of the Lower Hutt branch of Forest and Bird who since the 1980s have planted more than 90,000 trees to revegetate Matiu ( Somes Island ) in Wellington Harbour. A similar volunteer story is the transformation of Tiri Tiri Matangi island in the Hauraki Gulf , which has become a wonderful ‘open’ bird sanctuary in the past 30 years with only minimal input from the Department of Conservation.
Young briefly acknowledges in general the plethora of community groups who are replanting local areas. He notes that these initiatives exemplify the 1980s slogan ‘Think Global, Act Local’ and are the key to the future of conservation. ‘Much of this book has been about fighting national campaigns’, he writes. ‘While conservation needs individuals for leadership, it requires communities for action.’ It would be churlish and unrealistic to expect but a few of these community initiatives to be mentioned in Our Islands, Our Selves. Its value lies in providing such conservationists with a framework within which their contributions can be understood.
Our Islands, Our Selves, commissioned by the Department of Conservation, has a wider significance for New Zealand history in general, since it suggests that the department may finally be taking seriously its statutory requirement ‘to promote the conservation of New Zealand ’s natural and historic resources’. Until recently the ‘natural’ took precedence over the ‘historic’ to such an extent as to suggest myopia about the latter.
This could be excused because DoC’s early years were difficult. In 1987, following the forced marriage of the various government departments that became the Department of Conservation, the plight of endangered species such as kakapo and kiwi required all its attention, and history remained a bridesmaid. DoC was then preoccupied by Cave Creek and its aftermath, when safety standards were overhauled and the department’s management structure redesigned. Meanwhile, historic huts and other heritage items on the conservation estate were removed or rotted away, apparently with scant awareness of their significance. With an historian, Hugh Logan, now at the helm of DoC, the tide may be turning. Back-country huts are now evaluated and some are protected, and DoC has to its credit the magnificent restoration of Wellington ’s old wooden Government Buildings – one of the largest heritage projects ever undertaken in New Zealand .
In light of this awakening to history, it is regrettable that in Our Islands, Our Selves, conservation is limited to natural species and landscape, with the conservation of built heritage excluded on the grounds of ‘time and length requirements’. The author acknowledges heritage conservation as ‘until recently the poor relation of natural heritage conservation’, only to perpetuate the imbalance.
This decision is questionable because arguably the conservation of structures offers as many opportunities to learn about ourselves as nature conservation. Take, for example, the long campaign to protect Lake Manapouri , which Young rightly portrays as seminal in the evolution of modern nature conservation. This occupies eight pages, yet there is no mention of the concurrent and equally tenacious campaign to save Wellington’s Old St Paul’s. The preservation of the latter was equally important in the development of heritage conservation in New Zealand .
This deficiency could have been avoided simply by inserting an extra word in the subtitle to read, ‘A History of Nature Conservation in New Zealand’, or mitigated by devoting several sidebars (of which Our Islands, Our Selves has many) to significant examples of heritage conservation.
With this exception, David Young’s portrait of nature conservation is impressively diverse. He has read widely – the notes, bibliography and index together take up almost 60 pages, one fifth of the book. If, like Chief Historian Bronwyn Dalley speaking at last year’s PHANZA conference, you begin a book by reading the references, there is a fascinating story here in the footnotes alone.
In skilfully drawing together the disparate strands of the history of conservation in New Zealand , David Young has succeeded admirably. Our Islands, Our Selves fills an important gap on the bookshelf and should remain a definitive volume for years to come.
