A new book on Forest & Bird’s history deserves closer scrutiny, says historian Martin Fisher. (Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon)
A book commemorating the centenary of Forest & Bird skips lightly over its complex relationship with Māori — highlighting small positive interactions, but ignoring its fierce campaign against the Ngāi Tahu settlement deal in the 1990s, writes historian Martin Fisher.
In November 1997, after more than a decade of gruelling claims before the Waitangi Tribunal, various court actions, and Treaty settlement negotiations, Ngāi Tahu’s chief negotiator, Sir Tipene O’Regan, would’ve been forgiven for not sporting a giant grin during an interview on TVNZ’s Breakfast.
But such a smile was necessary to disarm Pākehā suspicion of what a Treaty settlement might mean.
Treaty negotiations minister Doug Graham didn’t front that morning, so it fell to O’Regan to explain the momentous occasion — the impending signing of the Ngāi Tahu Deed of Settlement.
Tā Tipene O’Regan smiles his way through a TV interview in 1997, during which he was asked to allay fears that Ngāi Tahu would restrict public access to conservation land.
Midway through the interview, O’Regan was asked about the fears of conservation, hunting and fishing lobbies that the settlement would cut off public access to conservation land: “Can you put their minds to rest?”
He replied: “We’ve never said that . . . That’s one of the fears that’s been generated by those lobbies.”
He paused, as if choosing his words carefully, then flashed that famous Cheshire grin: “We’ll remember their names.”
His comment was prescient. As a new book on the history of Forest & Bird demonstrates, it would indeed be left to Ngāi Tahu to remember the names of those who fought so hard against the iwi’s Treaty settlement.
In 2023, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, the organisation commissioned environmental historian David Young to write its centennial history.
The result is Force of Nature Te Aumangea o Te Ao Turoa: A conservation history. Sadly, Young had health problems and wasn’t able to complete the book. Author Naomi Arnold carried on Young’s work with help from Caroline Wood and Michael Pringle.
Force of Nature is filled with short, consumable takes on the environmental challenges that Forest & Bird faced over the last century, and is beautifully illustrated with photographs and artworks gracing nearly every page.
There are a number of short biographies of key figures in Forest & Bird, including founder Val Henderson and various presidents and CEOs, as well as less well-known figures, such as Gilbert Archey, Jacqui Barrington, Violet Briffault, Lily Daff, Christine Foxall, Basil Graeme, Matekoraha Te Peehi Rangihika “Bessie” Jaram, Lance McCaskill, Alistair McDonald, William Roy McGregor, Peter McIntyre, Perrine Moncrief, Isabel Morgan, Geoffrey Orbell, Margaret Peace, Kevin Prime, Fraser Ross, Colin Ryder, Ralph Sylvester, and Diana Shand.
These snapshots of grassroots organisers, fundraisers, helpers, artists, workers, and gardeners are a real highlight of Force of Nature, shining a light on those whom history too readily forgets.
I assume the authors would’ve received fairly explicit instructions for the kind of book they should write. Like other centennial histories, this one takes stock of what the organisation has achieved over its century of work. It also covers Forest & Bird’s early struggles to gather enough funding for its environmental work at a time when such work wasn’t widely accepted or appreciated.
In other words, the authors weren’t tasked with writing a critical history of Forest & Bird — and Force of Nature certainly isn’t that*.* The book jumps from story to story, painting a picture of a scrappy, plucky, underfunded, volunteer-led group that went on to become arguably Aotearoa New Zealand’s most successful non-governmental organisation.
Not everyone will share Forest & Bird’s rose-tinted view on its own history. There will be the usual suspects — farmers, fishers, loggers, miners and various captains of industry who couldn’t stand what they saw as a preening, arrogant, know-it-all group of “tree huggers”.
But there are also less well-known critical views of Forest & Bird’s conservationist attitudes and actions — most notably from Māori communities who suffered through the worst of colonisation only to be confronted by a different kind of coloniser: the “Greenies”.
Force of Nature acknowledges that Forest & Bird has largely been a Pākehā-led environmental organisation. Nonetheless, the authors contend that, at various points in its history, Forest & Bird has engaged with “biculturalism”.
For example, it points out that during the 1950s, Forest & Bird worked with Māori communities to prevent the logging of native forests in Te Urewera. The authors believe this represented “a possibly unprecedented display of positive race relations from a cautious Pākehā-dominated organisation attentive to what we today would call its treaty responsibilities”.
Other bicultural success stories are presented, including Forest & Bird branches in Hawke’s Bay working with the Ngāti Pārau hapū to protect remnants of the giant estuary, Te Whanganui-a-Orotu.
Later, the clash between Forest & Bird members and loggers at Minginui in Te Urewera is presented as an effort to save the Whirinaki forest. The account fails to note the impact on the loggers’ livelihoods in Māori communities at Murupara and elsewhere.
In the discussion of Forest & Bird’s work on Kāpiti Island, a passing reference is made to sheep belonging to Ngāti Toa and the environmental damage they caused. This epitomises the clash between Māori tino rangatiratanga and the Pākehā conservationist ethos. And in fact, it was this clash that initially drove the establishment of Forest & Bird. Founder Val Sanderson would stare out at Kāpiti from his home on the coast in the early 1900s, focused on saving the island’s forest and birds, without sparing a thought for the rights of Ngāti Toa.
Unfortunately, the book references only one Waitangi Tribunal research report (by Klaus Neumann on Whirinaki Forest), and none of the Tribunal’s final reports. These would have been very helpful for contextualising the numerous interactions between tāngata whenua and Forest & Bird. The authors nibble at the edges of the story but sadly refuse to go deeper, which is a shame in such a rich site of Māori-Pākehā relations.
One section — on efforts to manage the environmental state of the Whanganui River— directly addresses the clashes between Māori and conservationists, and notes that Forest & Bird “underestimated the relationship of local tribes to their river and the dynamics of the new era of the [Waitangi] tribunal”.
There is also recognition of the adverse effects on Māori of early conservationist efforts, including a quote from Henry Fletcher, an original Forest & Bird member and missionary, who noted the “double injustice to Māori in taking their remnant beauty spots for reserves”.
Nonetheless, politician Harry Ell is described glowingly in Force of Nature as the “godfather” of Forest & Bird, even though his Scenery Preservation Act 1903 devastated remnant Māori landholdings.
The authors state that Forest & Bird’s president from 1996 to 2001, Keith Chapple, had “limitations [which included] his difficulty in understanding Māori perceptions”. They note that “this changed following his injuries in a car accident in 2004” when the Whanganui Māori community came to Chapple’s aid and provided moral and emotional support. Perhaps because Chapple’s case presented a redemption story, the authors were open about his “limitations”.
They don’t extend the same treatment to Chapple’s predecessor, Kevin Smith. None of Smith’s significant limitations, including his fervent anti-Māori rhetoric and (like Chapple) his “difficulty in understanding Māori perceptions”, is included in his biography in Force of Nature. Instead, only Smith’s efforts to work with Ngāi Tahu whānau in the 1980s to help “save” forests at Ōkārito in Te Tai Poutini (the West Coast) are mentioned.
The roots of the challenges that would confront Māori and conservationists were apparent from the beginning. As Force of Nature rightly notes, the early work of Forest & Bird was connected to the efforts made by acclimatisation societies across Aotearoa New Zealand. Such societies imported exotic flora and fauna, such as rabbits, to remind settlers of their home countries.
Most observers would expect these two organisations — one focused on protecting indigenous forests and birds, the other on introducing exotic flora and fauna — to be at loggerheads. But that wasn’t the case. The first secretary of Forest & Bird was the president of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society, and Forest & Bird’s first headquarters were in the office of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society. This colonial connection would be reflected in Forest & Bird’s future role as a key third party in the Ngāi Tahu settlement negotiations.
Rolland O’Regan, the father of Sir Tipene, appears throughout the book. Rolland was almost a founding member of Forest & Bird. Force of Nature includes an extended quote from him addressing 250 attendees at a Forest & Bird family camp at Waikanae in 1971: “Never was the need greater for a political pressure group to stop environmental destruction.” His name is also listed on a 1935 Forest & Bird petition. In the second half of Force of Nature, Rolland is identified as Sir Tipene’s father, but no further comment is made about this important connection.
Ngāi Tahu are referred to throughout Force of Nature in small, positive ways. The authors note the successful efforts of Forest & Bird volunteers working with Ngāi Tahu muttonbirders in the Deep South to fight the rat menace, and their work with kaitiaki of hoiho. They also mention a gift of pounamu to Kevin Smith for his efforts in helping save forests at Ōkārito.
But they overlook a fundamental part of Forest & Bird’s history — its role in the Ngāi Tahu Treaty settlement negotiations. Along with other environmentally-minded organisations, Forest & Bird worked to delay the settlement for many years through its obstructive and persistent opposition.
Intense, consistent, and often irrational opposition was cultivated within and across conservation, tramping, and public access groups that shared interests with Forest & Bird. This included the Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) and, possibly worst of all, Public Access New Zealand (PANZ), led by Bruce Mason, a fervent admirer of a monocultural Pākehā New Zealand. Mason was an active board member of Forest & Bird in the 1970s and ‘80s, and his connections with the organisation continued into the 1990s, when intense media campaigns and political lobbying opposed any proposed redress in the Ngāi Tahu negotiations beyond urban commercial land.
These groups (along with, initially, the Fish & Game Council) were suspicious that the conservation estate would be the primary means of addressing claims, and that any resulting Ngāi Tahu participation in the management of conservation areas would curb public access.
The campaign by Forest & Bird, FMC and PANZ took on an unfortunate racial element. Historical tropes such as the stereotype of the “greedy Maori” were perpetuated in press releases that portrayed Ngāi Tahu as wanting the entire conservation state for itself. Simultaneously, these groups questioned whether Ngāi Tahu had any connection at all to mountains and rivers inland, and painted the iwi as just another private (even foreign) interest.
During numerous consultation meetings involving Ngāi Tahu, iwi members were often outnumbered and vilified. Eventually, Ngāi Tahu representatives couldn’t justify attending consultation meetings where they were treated in that way.
For all intents and purposes, Forest & Bird waged a media and political war on Ngāi Tahu and the Crown during negotiations. Yet, Sir Tipene was himself a life member of Forest & Bird, while others in the wider negotiating team, including Anake Goodall, were members.
It would have been fascinating to learn more about how the Ngāi Tahu members of Forest & Bird viewed the organisation in light of this history, but the authors don’t cover this territory.
Force of Nature goes on to proudly claim that Forest & Bird was a key figure in the establishment of the Department of Conservation (DOC) during the Fourth Labour Government.
While the accomplishments of a permanent conservation-focused government department are to be lauded, especially in light of this country’s destruction of its natural resources in record time following formal colonisation, the immense challenge to Māori communities that DOC has posed (and continues to pose) needs to be emphasised.
In many ways, Forest & Bird was DOC, and DOC was Forest & Bird. Together, they were highly successful in limiting conservation redress in the Ngāi Tahu settlement.
They also played a significant role in delaying negotiations for several years, including the breakdown of negotiations between late 1994 and mid-1996. It was only once the conservation lobby’s influence was set aside, after the Crown and Ngāi Tahu had engaged in years of good-faith discussions with conservationists, that significant progress was made. Finally, in June 1996, an interim settlement was reached.
In August 1996, Forest & Bird strongly urged the government to hold consultations with conservation groups about the proposed settlement.
Yet Forest & Bird refused to attend nearly all of those meetings and, along with PANZ, then released selective quotes about the settlement and its provisions to heighten Pākehā fears of being denied access to conservation land.
Neither organisation’s media releases noted that around 30,350 hectares of high-country pastoral leasehold land would be retired to the conservation estate as a result of the Ngāi Tahu settlement.
Forest & Bird also opposed the creation of a conservation board sub-committee for Whenua Hou (Codfish Island) and even spoke out against the Crown returning the Tītī Islands to Ngāi Tahu.
And yet, in most areas, public access was not only guaranteed in the final settlement but significantly expanded.
Organisational memory is important to Ngāi Tahu whānau and the iwi. The Crown is often accused of organisational amnesia, largely due to persistent staff turnover rather than malicious intent. In Treaty settlement negotiations, some third parties can suffer a similar affliction, especially if their conduct during those events doesn’t reflect well on the organisation in hindsight.
The centennial history of Forest & Bird does a wonderful job of highlighting the important social good the organisation provided over its first century. It would’ve been helpful if the brief to the authors had included an acknowledgment of Forest & Bird’s limitations, and a more extensive, open discussion of them to ensure they aren’t repeated.
Forest & Bird has come a long way in its relationship with te ao Māori since the back-to-back presidencies of Kevin Smith and Keith Chapple.
If only this book could have assessed, celebrated, and maintained that progress. I regret that it does not. It therefore falls to Ngāi Tahu, as it so often does, to “remember their names.”
Dr Martin Fisher is a senior lecturer above the bar at the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, University of Canterbury.
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