Today, as I was putting my son down for his afternoon nap, I caught the melodic, undulating song of what might have been a tui, but when I looked out of my son’s window the bush on the bank outside, it was the distinctive olive shape of a smaller sized bird that I saw. It was a bellbird – the first that I have ever spotted either around my home, or indeed, in Paraparaumu [click here to view map], the coastal town in which I live.
Author: envirohistory NZ
Dividing the landscape: production vs scenery
Nowhere tells more starkly of the duality in our relationship towards the natural environment than Taranaki: the dichotomy of the “productive” and “scenic” landscape.
Taranaki is known throughout the world for the almost perfectly conical mountain which rises up through what are otherwise the flattest of plains. This mountain and the region was made famous by its being used as the backdrop for the film, “The Last Samurai”. Indeed, New Zealand was chosen to shoot the movie due to the mountain’s remarkable resemblance to Japan’s Mount Fuji – also a perfectly conical mountain that stands alone on the plains of central Japan. Continue reading
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Environmental history of the future: could Christchurch become our “Greenest City”?
Last week, I was privileged enough to attend the Rotorua Lakes Symposium in Rotorua City. This symposium, themed “Fix a lake and grow a city”, brought together scientists, politicians, natural resource managers, landscape architects, academics, tangata whenua, business people and many others to explore ways in which the lakes of Rotorua can be restored to create wealth and wellbeing in the Rotorua district. Continue reading
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envirohistory NZ podcast – episode 5 out now!
Episode 5 of the envirohistory NZ podcast series is now out. This episode explores the critical link between environmental history and the decisions we make about how we shape and live within the environment. To illustrate the importance of environmental history in helping to inform environmental policy and planning decisions, this episode reflects on two recent natural disasters – the February 22nd Canterbury earthquake and the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan. Continue reading
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The place of 5000 pennies – Hamurana Springs
What does the Department of Conservation, a golf club, and a hapu (sub-tribe) have in common?
They are all partners in caring for the Hamurana Springs Reserve, on the northern shores of Lake Rotorua [click here to view location]. The hapu, Ngati Rangiwewehi, a sub-tribe of Te Arawa, has an association with the spring and the river which flows from it dating back to the 1300. Continue reading
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Two faces of a lake – Lake Rotoiti
Lake Rotoiti is one of a number of lakes which lie to the east and south of Lake Rotorua, the second largest lake in the North Island. The lakes were created as a result of a volcanic eruption about 240,000 years ago, and were for hundreds of years the ancestral home and source of food and other resources for the Te Arawa people.
Today, the land around the lakes is almost without exception developed – either as urban or rural settlements or farmland – with almost no indigenous forest remaining [click here to view satellite image showing the extent of development around the lake]. Continue reading
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Nature strikes again – beautiful Tohoku’s coastal towns devastated by tsunami
Once again, I find myself writing about a place that I hold great affection for, after it has been devastated by a natural disaster [see also: Christchurch – a city haunted by its environmental past]. This time the north-east of Japan, where a tsunami (tidal wave) of up to 10 metres high struck the eastern coast, following the magnitude 8.9 earthquake of 11 March. Continue reading
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When is a lake not a lake? The case of Lake Karapiro
On a recent trip from Rotorua to Hamilton, I stopped to look at what I thought at the time was a section of Waikato River, just west of State Highway 1, south-east of Cambridge [click here to view map]. Waikato River is New Zealand’s longest river, running 425 kms from its source on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu, through Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake, then flowing through the Waikato Plains before emptying into the Tasman Sea. I was therefore surprised to see a sign at a jetty informing me that this was in fact a lake – Lake Karapiro.
But something didn’t add up – it seemed remarkably “river-like” for a lake. Continue reading
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Inland West Coast: the realm of semi-tamed nature
Driving the route east of Lake Brunner, then back to the coast via State Highway 73 through Taramakau Valley [click here to view map], I was struck by the palpable human imprint even on the most (at first glance) wild and rugged looking landscapes. Through the Taramakau Valley, the hills and mountains on either side of the Taramakau River are so steep that landslips are frequent events, sometimes missing farmhouses perched precariously at the bottom of these slopes by a breathtakingly small margin. Continue reading
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Christchurch: a city haunted by its environmental past?
It is with both horror and immeasurable sadness that I contemplate the tragic consequences of last Tuesday’s massive earthquake on the city that I lived in for 8 years, and which I still regard with immense affection. I cannot even begin to imagine how life must be like for its residents today, especially those who have friends or family who have perished. Continue reading
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