May 11, 2010
The dramatic tussock-lands of Lindis Pass are one the iconic landscapes of the South Island, and much admired by the traveler on their way from Canterbury to Queenstown or beyond. So iconic has this landscape become, it is hard to believe that while the tussock vegetation is “indigenous”, it is not “natural”. Rather, it is a human-induced landscape.
Lindis Pass is part of an extensive “dryland zone” which extends along much of the eastern part of the South Island [see map below right]. (more…)
February 10, 2010
The earlier post on Hunting in New Zealand prompted one of our regular contributors, Paul Knight (now 74), to reminisce about his own hunting days:
When I was a chil
d, my father used to take me fishing in Whangaroa Harbour and hunting for rabbits and hares, ducks and swans. By my early teens I had graduated to hunting deer. The purpose of both the fishing and the hunting was to keep an old freezer stocked for the family of 6. By the time I was a university student in the 1950s, I went hunting for deer by myself, traveling by motorbike with sidecar (Triumph 500 Speed Twin), mostly to Minginui Forest, west of Te Urewera National Park.
Hunting at Minginui was always successful. There was no need to get up at dawn. Even in the middle of the day you could creep up on clearings in the kanuka scrub or forest with a good chance of finding a herd of anything up to about 20 deer resting in the sun. They would make off in panic and not infrequently ran straight at me in the confusion. (more…)
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January 9, 2011
Canterbury Plains: an ecological “ground zero”
Posted by envirohistorynz under commentary | Tags: biodiversity, Canterbury, Canterbury Plains, Colin Meurk, coprosma, deforestation, Environmental History, farming, farming productivity, Four Leaf, ground zero, industrial agriculture, intensive farming, Japan, kanuka, Landcare Research, matai, New Zealand, Rebecca Macfie, Resource Management Act, satoyama, semi-managed nature, The Listener, totara, Waipara Valley |Leave a Comment
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