From Time Travel & Ecology, to Bike Tracks & Volunteers

Something is wrong. I’m on the wrong side of the mountains, and it feels a little odd. This week, for the first time since I have been in New Zealand, I find myself staying on the eastern side of the Southern Alps for more than a weekend.

We’re over here working on a new project on the Waimakariri River just north of Christchurch ~ Poynters Nature Reserve to be precise. The reserve used to pretty much be derelict land, with 4x4’s, dirt bikes, and those who liked to dump rubbish and burn cars being the main visitors to the area. Sounds pretty horrible eh?

Well only 4 years later, the land has seen a major turnaround already. Environment Canterbury (to be known henceforth as ECAN) have done an amazing job in rezoning the land usage to preserve some land for off road vehicle usage, some for mountain biking, and some for biodiversity recovery. We’re naturally working in the bio-recovery area, mainly doing significant environmental ninja-ing by planting natives with a vengeance along riparian sections (river edge to you and I) to slowly begin the restoration back to a semblance of how it may have once been.

The Waimakariri is a braided river, meaning it looks a bit like a delta with banks of gravel and sand building up and changing its course. When the Europeans started to settle the swamp that used to be Christchurch, it seemed like a bad idea to have a huge river which flooded vast sections, so they began to ‘engineer’ the river to obey man’s desires with big flood defences, to which part of the plan included planting Willow trees as the root system stabilised their workings. Today the willow and poplar trees dominate the area along the rivers (and are still being planted by the ongoing engineering works) and instead of trying to wipe them out, they are just an accepted part of the environment over this side of the mountains.

Conservation is as much about making the trade offs and balance of human usage as saving anything and everything that is left and preventing humans from stepping foot in the area ever again. I think sometimes Conservation gets a bad name for wanting to ‘lock up the land’, but projects like this show that there is a great balance that can be struck which will benefit all parties, and still enable a decent area to recover and create a corridor for biodiversity to leap frog its way across the Canterbury Plains.

I’ve also brought my hardcore reading materials with me this time. ‘Conservation; Linking ecology, economics & culture’ by Mulder & Coppolillo is one which I am wading through in chunks as it has some interesting info and points of view, arguments and case studies discussed within. It’s really more of a text book for a uni course, but it’s helping me to think more analytically about the work I do, about my own personal understanding and view on conservation, and to read a little more information which isn’t so populous as National Geographic or the likes. If you’re studying environmental science, conservation biology or the likes, it’s a good one to pick up (if you haven’t already been buried by your reading list!).

This more studious reading is somewhat juxtaposed to my recent reads, which have included The Time Travellers Wife (by Stephanie Niffenegger) just finished recently. A beautiful story of life, love & loss, crafted quite amazingly by a lady who apparently used to be a Creative Writing teacher if my sources are correct. I know I may lose a few ‘bloke points’ here (who’m I kidding, I don’t have any of those) but my emotions were somewhat jerked around by this book, and the idea of living a life such as these characters do was stirring and I was sincerely welling up toward the end, whilst I was on the plane back from Australia a week or so back. Beautifully written, and highly recommended, and a big thanks to Mister Chris for the tip off.

Anyways, enough of my rambles, but if you have any hints on what I should be buying next then let me know. Be good y’all.