'Out in the Open' with T. H. Potts

Forest and Bird, Issue 292, 1 May 1999, Page 36

'Out in the Open' with T.

H. Potts

PAUL STAR.

The contradictory views of ‘our first conservationist’ reflect the differing values of pioneer

times, writes

The author of Out in the Open had a hand in introducing foreign plants and birds but believed in protecting native species too. hen the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, over half of New Zealand was still covered in native forest. Much of the remainder was wetland or tussock. Fifty years later, nearly half of the country had been transformed into farmland, where introduced stock was largely reared on introduced grasses. Because so much of our natural heritage was destroyed in the process, European settlers of the nineteenth century are often described as though they lacked all appreciation of New Zealand’s environment and had no interest in its conservation. But it wasn’t that simple. We've all been party to actions which have led to pollution and environmental degradation. Few see the paradoxes or realize the consequences until later. Only some never care, and this was no different in the last century. Thomas Henry Potts, the Canterbury runholder who Philip Temple has called "New Zealand’s first conservationist, was one who cared. In retrospect, his life seems full of contradictions. In 1855, like many new immigrants, he was nurturing gorse and oak, but he also transplanted rata and native clematis. And although he killed weka, he didn’t want to exterminate them. The problem was, ‘they are so partial to fowl’s eggs ... that one is reduced to the alternative of wekas or eggs. He clearly understood the conflict of interests between native wildlife and invading colonists. With his 13 children, his cattle and his sheep, Potts was very much an invader. As a source of income, he established a huge runholding at Hakatere on the eastern side of the upper Rangitata River. He was MP for Governors Bay, where he lived, but he was always ‘impatient for the session to close in order that he might go camping in the bush during the nesting season’ For, more than anything else, Potts enjoyed the study of New Zealand’s natural history. In 1872 he described the only remaining unclassified species of kiwi, and his papers for the New Zealand Institute included the best accounts of native birds then available. His book Out in the Open (1882) was the first substantial work of natural history published in the country. (It was republished in 1976.) In his last article, about the Chathams, Potts regretted that, ‘owing to the grazing of stock, there has disappeared much of the thick covert which afforded the requisite privacy for native

birds, but he wrote this sitting at the table of his son-in-law, whose animals had plundered the island’s ecosystems with particular success. Potts, throughout his life, maintained an interest both in the conservation of native flora and the planting of exotics. Similarly, his support for the native fauna went hand in hand with an early involvement in the acclimatization of European birds and the continuous promotion of cattle and sheep. This was less problematic for him than it might be for us. Any rigid division between native and exotic, pronouncing one in place and the other out of place, was not for Potts, since either could be useful in the development of New Zealand. He shared this view with William Travers, Thomas Kirk, and other early conservationists who were also active in the acclimatization movement. Conservation mattered to them since it prevented future loss. By the same token, acclimatization was crucial because it provided a storehouse of exotics with known potential. The Canterbury Acclimatisation Society received big numbers of English birds in the 1860s; some were successfully released and helped to establish by its vice-president, Thomas Potts. He also planted trees. When he recorded that, of his 21 species of pines, Pinus radiata outstripped all else, he inevitably played a role in promoting this particular exotic. here is no question of Potts’s role in the ‘ecological invasion’ of New Zealand, but he combined this with a spirited defence of the earlier environment. His first public attempt to conserve native trees occurred in 1858, when he approached the Provincial Secretary about the destruction of totara on the Port Hills. It did no good: ‘with the utmost urbanity of demeanour, the worthy official showed that he neither knew nor cared a rap about the matter’ Potts witnessed the burning of the forests on Banks Peninsula from his doorstep. In 1868 he got Parliament to look into the colony’s timber resources, ‘with a view to their better Conservation. This provoked national debate, but it wasn’t until 1874 that Julius Vogel legislated to support colonial development by a wiser use of such forests. New Zealand’s native birds were also discussed in Parliament, though here again we must be clear about the attitudes of their protectors. Sportsmen like Potts saw no inherent conflict between hunting and conservation. They thought of selective shooting in much the same light as people once felt about the

selective logging of trees. The argument then was with ‘wholesale slaughter’ ‘reckless burning; lost opportunities and unnecessary waste. Potts thought the extinction of kiwi and kakapo would be "a lasting disgrace’. When a Wild Birds Protection Bill succeeded in Britain in 1872, he asked the English lobbyists to ‘help us to save our birds’ In fact, even with kiwi, protection only came in 1896, eight years after Potts’s death, and he often doubted whether legislation would triumph over individual greed. As a governor of the Canterbury Museum, however, he could directly influence its director, Julius Haast, who gathered kiwi and kakapo as trading items. Potts successfully reversed this policy in 1878. In pioneer New Zealand, the population decline of native birds was obvious, but Potts refused to see this as the inevitable ‘displacement’ of inferior species. He

thought ‘people themselves can alone determine what shall be allowed to exist’. In the nineteenth century, the role of Christians as stewards of the earth more often became a mandate for colonization than for conservation, but the Anglican tradition of ‘natural theology’ caused Potts to treat all nature with reverence. The value of native species was unknown — since they had only recently been identified — but it was not to be denied. Potts also understood ‘nature’s economy’ and saw the need to conserve habitat as much as species. Victorians didn’t have the knowledge of ecology which has made us so aware of the flow-on effects of environmental change, but some had a sense of the web of life. In the late 1870s, fresh ideas on scenic beauty, tourism and health coincided with worries about timber shortages and climate change. Americans wrote of national parks, and Yellowstone became the world’s first in 1872. Potts welded his old arguments for reserves to the new talk of health resorts and national parks, and

conceived a plan for ‘national domains’. He identified three kinds of preservation — of health, of trees, and of birds — and proposed three kinds of ‘domain. Some would be sanitariums for the human sick. Others would be native forest reserves, ‘nurseries and storehouses ... of the indigenous flora of New Zealand. Thirdly, and most radically, Potts suggested fauna reserves to protect interesting species for science. He wanted islands as fauna reserves. Resolution Island, plus some offshore islands in the north, could be parks or domains ‘where animals should not be molested under any pretence whatsoever’. In Europe, hunters had fenced in game reserves for centuries. In a new country, Potts turned to the natural barrier presented by the sea. hese ideas had their impact. Scientists successfully lobbied for Resolution Island to be reserved in 1891. Richard Henry’s time there, from 1894 to 1908, represents one of the most dramatic attempts at bird preservation in any country’s history. Henry transferred kakapo from the mainland to Resolution Island to protect them from stoats and rats. Unfortunately, the attempt eventually failed when stoats swam to the island, but it was a world first in ‘ecological restoration’ with government support. The broader notion of national parks or domains was also accepted about this time. In 1883, the Bishop of Nelson hoped for ‘Government lands ... which might be our Yellowstone domain. In the year before Potts’s death, Horonuku, on behalf of the Tuwharetoa, donated land which became (in 1894) the core of Tongariro National Park. National parks have since become the dominant model of environmental protection. Because of that, the history of conservation is often traced back only as far as their creation. But while European settlement before that undoubtedly involved sweeping destruction, this never went on unquestioned or ‘without reserve’. The life of New Zealand’s ‘first conservationist’ includes many examples of concern for the environment, even in this period of its most rapid transformation. Born out of paradox it may be, but evidence of this early concern is undeniable and inspiring.

PAUL STAR is an environmental historian and secretary of Dunedin Forest and Bird. His research into T. H. Potts was assisted by the New Zealand History Research Trust Fund.