Grass and the Destruction of New Zealand Landscape

Thesis

The land of New Zealand has suffer from the hands of Maori and Pakeha native who use the land for agriculture and hunting. The land used to be filled with forest and swamp, but because of high demand for meat, butter, cheese, and wool, farmer had to make space for farming and raising cattles. The introduction of new grass in order to support the animals also played a major role in changing the land as well. The change in the land has cause problem like loss of biodiversity and water quality.

New Zealand New zealand is located in the southwestern pacific ocean and it has two land masses which are the north and south island. The capital of new Zealand is Wellington and it has a population of 4.794 millions.

INCREDIBLE FARM DRONE FOOTAGE NEW ZEALAND

In this video, there is a drone flying over a farm in New Zealand. There are lots of open spaces for animals to go eat and roam around.

Start the video at 1:12.

The Beginning

 In 1926 to 1927 George Stapledon, who was known as the top grass scientist of his time, traveled to Australia and New Zealand. He had established a Welsh plant breeding station in Australia in 1919 to develop new strains of ley grasses. His journey resulted in an agreement to share grassland expertise under the auspices of the empire marketing board and the publication of his observations made on the tour by oxford university press in 1928. In his introduction, he claimed that grassland was equal to the sea and should it should regard as one the cornerstone on which the greatness of the British empire has been built. The statement caught the interest of Walter Elliot who was the future minister of Agriculture and ardent supporter of the empire of marketing board. He offered to give 25 shilling toward purchasing worked-up grass for every five-pound note that Great Britain expends on oversea products of any kind which consisted of mostly pastoral product of wool, meat, butter, cheese, and hides.

 Between 1870 and 1914, meat import had risen from 10 to 40 percent. The united states supply of pastoral products declined so Britain had to rely on its formal and informal empires for new food and raw, material in the 20th century. New Zealand earned 93% of its export from grass-related product in 1921.

The table show that New Zealand was mainly supplying wool, meat, butter, and cheese in 1921. This explain why the New Zealand has a lot of farms.

Grass

  All over the settler colonies indigenous plants, whether it was grassland, forest, or wetland were being replaced by “English grassed”. The process of grassland transformation was carried out to the extreme in New Zealand. The land was only inhabited by Maori people from Polynesia and because they were not modernized, their vegetations was vulnerable to Europeans technologies. Hundreds and thousands of hectares of thick temperate rainforest were burned and reseeded with imported grass. Almost 35% of New Zealand’s land was given over to improve pasture compared to Australia which was 7.5%. In 1980s, every person had around 20 sheep in New Zealand.

New Zealand Climate

    The climate in New Zealand is temperate, which allow grass to grow year-round in many districts with the option of leaving stock to winter over outside. Because of the climate, Europeans felt that it was okay to turn the country into a grassland experiment. Many settler thought that they were completing God’s creation, redeeming what has been “unproductive” land, in which barrenness was a sign of the absence of Christian people.

Early settlers

   In 1896, the Maori population reached its lowest of 42,000. The Europeans settler known as Pakeha outnumbered Maori by more than 16 to one. The dry eastern sides of the central ranges of North Island, and of the southern Alps in the South Island, were dominated by scrubs and tussock grassland. The landscapes were a result of burning for purposes of hunting and forest clearance in the several centuries since the arrival of Maori. The wet western side of both Islands, and across the North Island ranges, temperate rainforest remained appearing. Wetland were important to Maori as food-gathering sites. Pakeha settler transported their suit of agricultural fauna and flora from farms that were half a world away which resulted in the burning of bush, ploughing of tussock, draining of wetland and consequential sowing of grass seed.

Maori and Pakeha

Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand who came from Polynesia more than a 1000 years ago. Today, the Maori make up 14% of the New Zealand population and their history, language and tradition are part of the New Zealand Identity.

 Pakeha are the early Europeans settler from England. The term pakeha is used to differentiate the Maori from the European settlers.

Learning about The Environment

   Until the 1860s, pakeha supplemented and extended their own discoveries with information from Maori about weather and climate, hydrology, living things, topography and mountain passes. They later became less reliant on such information and began to follow their own procedures to observe, record, analyse and communicate important details about environmental processes, and how these could affect their lives and livelihood.

 Maori learned about their environment through close observation of proxies. They remembered the timing of extreme events, they understood how weather and other environmental occurrences could restrict travel, affect food gathering and limit gardening activities. They lack concept of akin and maxima, minima and mean.

Before 1840, there were few Europeans, but they soon increased bringing with them new good, words, information, contacts, mode of employment and way of life. Both Maori and Pakeha and to use had to use what psychologist call working memory to learn about the land. Working memory can be used to explain why human are innovative, strategic, thinker given long-term planning, and goal-as opposed to task oriented.

Pakeha Take over

  In 1896, the Maori population reached its lowest of 42,000. The Europeans settler known as Pakeha outnumbered Maori by more than 16 to one. The pakeha started implementing their own agriculture practices within New Zealand. The dry eastern sides of the central ranges of North Island, and of the southern Alps in the South Island, were dominated by scrubs and tussock grassland. The landscapes were a result of burning for purposes of hunting and forest clearance in the several centuries since the arrival of Maori. The wet western side of both Islands, and across the North Island ranges, temperate rainforest remained appearing. Wetland were important to Maori as food-gathering sites.Pakeha settler transported their suit of agricultural fauna and flora from farms that were half a world away which resulted in the burning of bush, ploughing of tussock, draining of wetland and consequential sowing of grass seed.

Kennett Watkins’ painting of the death of Gustavus von Tempsky during a battle against Tītokowaru at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, 1868.

Taste of Success

 The successful shipment of refrigerated meat, butter and cheese to London in 1882 set meat and butter production in New Zealand into a viable path. Farmers began producing cheese and butter for export. By 1911, there were over 20,000 farmers specialized in dairy farming.

The settlers believed that they overcome problems like poverty by creating new pastures out of the bush, or by draining swamps, which representing the best kind of improvement.

Richard John Seddon captured a widespread view of the meaning of progress in the experiment of New Zealand when he claimed that “every tree felled meant improvement of the public estate of the country” in 1894. In the 1890s and 1900s, there was a widespread of cutting and burning of the North Island bush, and much of the thick podocarp forest of Taranaki, Wanganui, Manawatu, Wairarapa, and then the interior king country, were replaced by grass.

An Effort to save New Zealand

Almost 85% of New Zealand’s original wetlands disappeared in this new drive to improve. Some people were concerned about the disappearing nature of New Zealand, J.P Grossman condemned deforestation as “evil” and Guy Scholefield complained that the landscape had been “Ravaged” by the “feverish haste” of settler who has caused “wanton and profligate” waste in their “pitiful and wicked war” on the bush”.

W.P. Reeves expressed concerned in a well known poem “The passing of the forest: a lament for the children of tane”. It was first published in 1898 as an appendix to his best-selling history The Long white Cloud.

The Result of Transforming The Land

   Because of the intense farming the biodiversity of New Zealand has declined. There have been more than 50 species of bird that have gone extinct since human first arrived. The expansion of farming has been the main reason for land clearance. Some species have gotten extinct because their environment have been destroyed. Changing the land have also brought new species to the land.

 New Zealand have contribution to greenhouse emission have increased by one percent each year by 1% since 1990. The major contributor is methane (54%) and nitrous oxide (26%).

   Water quality have also declined because of intense farming. Nitrogen and phosphorus usually end up in waterways from farm and make aquatic plants and algae thrive. Once they grow, they can cause many problems like restricting people from swimming, boating and fishing.

Summary

The arrival of Maori and Pakeha colonizer in New Zealand transformed the landscape. The land that used to be filled with rainforest, swamp, wetland, and tussock grass was replaced with farms and new grass that was imported from elsewhere. The Maori and Pakeha, cleared the land through burning, draining of wetland, and cutting down trees to make room for pasture. The meat, butter, cheese, and wool industry was the main driving force for transforming New Zealand into an agriculture powerhouse. Because of the intense farming, New Zealand now has a declining biodiversity since the environment of most animals and plants have been destroyed, the water quality is not good and the greenhouse emission has also increased.

sources

  • Brooking, Tom, Eric Pawson, “Seeds of Empire: the environmental transformation of New Zealand”. Melbourne: Oxford University press, 2002.
  • Brooking, Tom, Eric Pawson. “Learning about the environment in early colonial New Zealand”. Seed of Empire: the environmental transformation of New Zealand. Melbourne: Oxford University press, 2002. 34-50.
  • Brooking, Tom, Eric Pawson. “Pioneer Grassland Farming: Pragmatism, Innovation and Experimentation”. Seed of Empire: the environmental transformation of New Zealand. Melbourne: Oxford University press, 2002. 51-72.