We Brits love New Zealand . Most of us know someone who has holidayed there or even emigrated there. For my part, my brother-in-law and kiwi wife live there and I went to visit them in February to meet my new niece, Esme.
In many ways New Zealand is a sort of ‘improved' England . Low crime rates, hot summers and an outdoors lifestyle are coupled with landscapes that are grander than the Lakes or the Scottish highlands but at the same time share similarities.
But this was not how the first British arrivals found it in the 1830s where they found a land either densely forested or covered in swamp, tussock and flax.
The first East Polynesian settlers arrived in AD 1250. They developed their own culture now known as Maori. New Zealand 's isolation in the South Pacific Ocean makes it unique. Much of its diverse flora and fauna is endemic and their only two native mammals were two different species of bat.
The Polynesian settlers started to clear some of the forest in order to flush out and hunt the flightless Moa bird, which was hunted to extinction, as well as to grow sweet potato and arrowroot crops.
Centuries later Captain Cook ‘discovered' New Zealand in 1769. European sealing and whaling gangs arrived in 1792 and ruthlessly hunted their quarry for 20 years. Animal stocks became so exhausted that hunting was no longer commercially viable.
The 1840s saw the first large influx of European settlers and commercial enterprises. This led to the landscape being transformed into what we see today. Back then 80% of New Zealand was densely forested.
I met up with a local sheep farmer on the Otago Peninsula in the South Island for a wildlife tour of his farm. We got chatting about how his grass fields were full of creeping thistles, ragwort and woolly thistles which were familiar problem plants in the UK .
He was a 5 th generation farmer on the land. He explained that the grass seed had been imported from England and the weeds had come along with it. He told me that the first two generations made a living from logging the lush forest that once covered the rolling grass pastures of his farmland. Once the forest was felled, British grass seed was sown and sheep farming became the main source of income for the following two generations as the wool trade was so good.
Today it is difficult for the average-sized sheep farmer to make a living from sheep farming alone and so for his generation and the next (his son is 15 years old) diversification of some sort will be necessary.
The landscape had a feel of the Scottish islands, especially the beautiful white beaches in sheltered bays. But as we walked down to the beach I realised how different it was from the UK. Sea lions were hauled up on the sand and yellow eyed penguins looked out from the fringes of the sand dunes.
Yellow eyed penguins are the rarest penguins in the world. They are endemic to New Zealand where there is thought to be a population of just 2000. They have distinctive golden feathers which form a crown on their heads and a bright yellow eye stripe. They have slate grey-blue backs with a white breast and belly, flesh coloured feet, and thick reddish-purple bills. They have suffered serious declines in the last 50 years due to habitat loss and predation by introduced species.
As I photographed one of the penguins, I heard a familiar sound. A charm of goldfinches was working its way along the bank, feeding on thistle heads. The goldfinches were followed shortly by some green finches.
It turned out that not only had the early British settlers transformed the landscape to make it look a bit more like ‘home' but they had also brought their own wildlife with them too.
In fact, as I was browsing through my borrowed wildlife of New Zealand book that night, I noted that 33 species of birds and 32 species of mammals are now widely accepted as part of the New Zealand fauna.
Settlers had tried to naturalise 111 other species of birds to the country. But these introductions were unsuccessful either because the birds were migrants which flew away and did not return or conditions did not suit.
The largest number of successful introductions came from the British Isles and Europe and most introductions occurred in the first 25 years of settlement.
There were reasons behind the introductions. Game such as pheasant, mallard, canadian goose, quail, mute and black swan, 6 types of deer, rabbits and hares were brought across for sport as well as for food.
Hedgehogs, starlings, rooks and indian myna birds were brought in to carry out useful biological control of the recently developed farmland which was plagued by all manner of insects.
Garden birds such as most of the British finches, sparrows, crimson rosella, little owl and skylarks seem to have been introduced purely for sentimental reasons.
Some of the introductions were too successful and became menaces. Rabbits were introduced into New Zealand in 1864 for hunting and the desire to export rabbit skin. But by 1869 their population levels had gone through the roof and had become a serious problem especially on farmland, where 15 rabbits can consume the same amount of grass as one sheep.
Weasels, ferrets and stoats were introduced too in attempt to control the numbers of rabbits. But these predators are not choosy about their quarry. As well as hunting their intended target, they impacted heavily on populations of native ground nesting birdlife such as the kiwi and blue penguins, which had evolved without natural predators.
150 years on, the national parks are still struggling to control rabbit, stoat and weasel numbers by poisoning and trapping. In the patches of forest that I walked through I saw numerous baited traps to catch them.
This modified environment has some winners and losers. The native forest dwelling wildlife such as the moa, the huia, laughing owl and flightless wrens have all become extinct due to human activity and the introduction of predators. Populations of others have crashed as they were unable to adapt to a new environment.
Meanwhile, some native birds have thrived from the change. The Australasian harrier hawk has become much more prolific since the opening up of the land, improving its opportunities for hunting. I saw dozens of these soaring in the sky. Although, they were in moult when I was there, so they looked in a rather shabby state.
Some introduced species have been more successful in New Zealand than their country of origin.
The red pole was a good example of this. It is a rare finch in England but was extremely abundant in New Zealand. I saw more of this particular bird in five minutes than I will ever see in my whole life in the UK.
Preserving and reinstating land to its original state is now very much in fashion in New Zealand. The sheep farmer I met on the Otago Peninusula is working hard to encourage small colonies of yellow eyed penguins, blue penguins and sea lions to flourish. Vast tracts of land are being replanted or protected throughout the country and even gardeners are opting to plant native trees and shrubs in their own back gardens.
My trip to New Zealand was fascinating. It was intriguing to see the results that had been brought about over the years by the total transformation of the original kiwi landscape into something alien to it, albeit comfortingly homely to an English eye.
It was as if I was witnessing the product both successful and otherwise of a giant wildlife experiment, before the concept of ‘conservation' had even been coined.
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Wildlife Diary -
