An Eerie Silence

The northern tip of the south island of New Zealand seems to encompass what I've learned of this country ; it is a once beautiful land stripped of its greatness to make room for stupid sheep, smelly cows, and german tourists driving campervans.

When it was discovered a few centuries ago (first by the Polynesians, and then the Europeans), The Land of the Long White Cloud was smothered with vegetation as variable and alien as it was lush. Dozens of species of endemic birds and animals flourished. Flightless giants, like the dozen species of moa, roamed free of predators. Weird ground-dwelling montane parrots made their home here. A cricket the size of your hand was common on the rich forest floor.

Today, the forests have fallen eerily silent. The trees themselves have been burned to make way for monocultures of introduced fir that take advantage of the mild climate to hasten their route to becomming the next Harry Potter paperback.

Sometimes I wish that I could turn back time. Not because I want to meet my ancestors, open a bank account, or even to see who really killed Kurt Cobain. But because I yearn to see the world as it would have been before humans mucked it up. New Zealand, although still stunning in many respects, has been messed up pretty well. There are rats, mice, cats, rabbits, introduced birds, wild boar, deer, and all sorts of nasty aggressive plants. The public is asked to hit non-native possums with their cars at night and young “conservationists” are hired to “humanely” bonk possums on the head with mallets. What is this? A twisted episode of the Flinstones? No. It's just New Zealand.

To their credit, the Kiwi's have been making an admirable effort to right these past wrongs. They have DOC – the Department of Conservation, a governmental body charged with managing the natural areas. Sadly, most of their time is spent maintaining hiking trails and collecting fees from campsites. Because tourism has boomed, the push to preserve rather than transform the landscape has been growing. Still, alot of damage has been done and the problem is spreading. To the oceans.