Where the wild things are

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 11, Issue 496, 27 July 1993, Page 9

Where the wild things are

Dave Wakelin, advocacy manager for Tongariro National Park, recalls some of his favourite wild places - in keeping with the theme of Conservation Week which starts on Sunday. I was five at the time. Growing up in small rural Woodville in the 1950's What was wild to a five-year old? Not the Amazon, the plains of Africa or the steamy jungles of South East Asia. Far away wild places for a five-year old didn't extend beyond a few paddocks and trees that surrounded the little Wairarapa town. The tall forbidding macrocarpa trees that bordered the rugby grounds were wild. Why? They were the home of the Magpie! To a five-year old nothing was more terrifying than a huge black and white magpie swooping down from the tall trees. Every five-year old knew it was true that magpies tore young kids heads open or pecked out eyes if you or your mates even thought about climbing the macrocarpa in search of eggs. But, the challenge was there and the gnarly limbs of macrocarpa's begged to be climbed. Running, screaming five-year olds with magpies wheeling above. Macrocarpa's were the home of the wild things. There was another wild place in Woodville, a little west of town where

young children were not meant to go. Up the road, through the fence, under the trees and down to the rushes and water of the local swamp. Rushes and raupo, frogs and tadpoles. For several hours, until stomachs and fading light signalled time to go home this wild place was fortress and battle-field. Trampling the rushes, building forts, catching tadpoles, putting birds to flight. The conservation of wetlands was the last thought on the minds of mud-splattered five and six-year olds. Wriggling Shortly after this my family moved to Tauranga where as I grew up the number of wild places increased as did my understanding of how they might be somewhere special. My wild world expanded to include creeks full of wriggling eels and tiny fish, frogs and kura, water boatmen and pond weeds. Bushy places sung and spun to tui and pigeon, fantail and silvereye while rat and mouse nestled in the honeysuckle. In those earlier years rats and mice seemed natural inhabitants of the bush, only later did I learn that they were one of the reasons the bird song was growing quieter in the forests of the Kaimais and beyond. Even as I grew into teenage years my wild world had not ventured

much beyond the urban wilderness, beyond the bushy and wet fringes of a still relatively rural Tauranga. Scout trips took me into the forested Kaimais that, in the 1950's and 1960's reached in long green tongues almost to the sea. Urban expansion and kiwifruit orchards had not pushed back from the coastal strips much then. My first real excursion into the real wild places was to a Horopito possumer's hut and the muddy bulldozed track that is now the Ohakune Mountain Road. Never had I seen such huge lofty trees, heard such bird-song or experienced mountain air and waterfall. Possums for the first time, chattering at night, twisting in traps, piled up outside the hut, skins on boards, chunks in rich brown stew! This surely was truly where the wild things lived! Wild world From then on my wild world grew rapidly. Books became a passport to a wilder world beyond quiet coastal Tauranga. The Amazon was still the mightiest of jungles that hadn't heard the sound of the axe and crackle of fire. Orangutan swung in great numbers through the forests of Borneo and the White Rhino rumbled without fear throughout Africa. I grew up into adulthood with an appreciation

that places like the Kaimai Ranges, wetlands large and small, shrinking pockets of farmland native bush were just as special as the larger national and forest parks. Along the way I met many who shared my feelings, that has always been encouraging. Since then I have experienced the vastness of Fiordland, the austerity of Tongariro and the incredible exotic wildlife and habitats of South East Asia and the Pacific. Sadly, in New Zealand as well as overseas the wild things are becoming fewer and places for wild things shrinking daily. From space the fires of the Amazon twinkle like the sparkle of fireworks, the grand orangutan, which I have been privileged to see in the wild, has become a sought after then discarded Taiwanese household pet and the White Rhino is on the verge of extinction. New Zealand fares not much better. With the dubious honour of having the most animals on the world endangered species list every little bit we do to protect our living legacy of swamp, forest, local patch of bush, beach front and town domain will show we do care now and in the future. Wild places can be as small as your back-yard, as large as the local swamp and as vast as all of beyond.