International Review Australian Enviromental History PDF

International Review of Environmental History is published by ANU Press
The Australian National University

Acton ACT 2601, Australia
Email: anupress@anu.edu.au
This title is available online at press.anu.edu.au
ISSN 2205-3204 (print)
ISSN 2205-3212 (online)
Printed by Griffin Press
Cover design and layout by ANU Press.
Cover image: Wynston Cooper, Reflections of Jade, March 2009. Image of Lan Yuan : AGarden
of Distant Longing, Dunedin, New Zealand. Image kindly reproduced with the permission ofWynston
Cooper.
2015 ANU Press
Editor:
James Beattie, History, University of Waikato & Research Associate, Centre for Environmental History,
Associate Editor:
Brett M. Bennett, University of Western Sydney
Editorial Board:

Maohong Bao, Peking University

Greg Barton, University of Western Sydney
Tom Brooking, University of Otago
Nicholas Brown, The Australian National
University
Matthew Chew, Arizona State University
Gregory T. Cushman, University of Kansas
Vinita Damodaran, University of Sussex
Rohan DSouza, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Sonja Duempelmann, Harvard University
Jim Fleming, Colby College
Guorong Gao, Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences
Andrea Gaynor, University of Western
Australia
Tom Griffiths, The Australian National
University
Eugenia Herbert, Mount Holyoke College
Peter Holland, University of Otago
Katie Holmes, La Trobe University
Adrian Howkins, Colorado State University
Tom Isern, North Dakota State University

Nancy Jacobs, Brown University
Ryan Tucker Jones, University of Auckland
Peter Lavelle, Temple University
Joseph Lawson, Newcastle University
Robert B. Marks, Whittier College
Edward Melillo, Amherst College
Ruth Morgan, Monash University
Emily OGorman, Macquarie University
Hiroki Oikawa, Yokohama National
University
Jos Pdua, Federal University of Rio
Eric Pawson, University of Canterbury
Ulrike Plath, University of Tallinn
Simon Pooley, Imperial College London
Libby Robin, The Australian National University
Fei Sheng, Sun Yat-Sen University
Lance van Sittert, University of Cape Town
Paul Star, University of Waikato
Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University
Mei Xueqin, Tsinghua University
International Review of Environmental History is published with the support of the Centre for Environmental
History, The Australian National University: ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/about/. It is also supported
by the Historical Research Unit: www.waikato.ac.nz/fass/study/subjects/history/available-papers; Faculty
of Arts and Social Sciences; and the Environmental Research Institute: www.waikato.ac.nz/eri/, University
of Waikato, New Zealand.
About the Journal

International Review of Environmental History takes an interdisciplinary and global approach to
environmental history. It publishes on all thematic and geographical topics of environmental history, but
especially encourages articles with perspectives focused on or developed from the southern hemisphere
and the global south. This includes but is not limited to Australasia, East and South East Asia, Africa and
South America.
International Review of Environmental Historys editorial board includes historians, scientists, and
geographers who work on environmental history and the related disciplines of garden history and
landscape studies. This methodological breadth distinguishes International Review of Environmental
History from other environmental history journals, as does its attempt to draw together cognate research
areas in garden history and landscape studies.
The journals goal is to be read across disciplines, not just within history. We encourage scholars to
think big and to tackle the challenges of writing environmental histories across different methodologies,
nations, and timescales. We embrace interdisciplinary, comparative, and transnational methods, while still
recognising the importance of locality in understanding these global processes.
The Centre for Environmental History at The Australian National University sponsors the journal, and
ANUPress will publish hardcopy and free electronic versions of the journal. It is also supported by the
Historical Research Unit; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; and the Environmental Research Institute,
University of Waikato, New Zealand. Our open-access policy means that articles will be available free to
scholars around the world, ensuring high citation rates and impact in and beyond the field of history.
International Review of Environmental History is happy to consider future special issues focusing on
themes drawn from conferences or collaborations.
Submission Details
Please send article submissions or abstracts to the Editor, Dr James Beattie, History, University of Waikato,
Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand. Email: jbeattie@waikato.ac.nz.
Abstracts should be no more than 200 words, and include a list of keywords. Articles should be in the
range 5,000 to 8,000 words (including footnotes), although longer submissions may be considered after
consultation with the editor.
Style and referencing: please use footnotes in Chicago Style, and follow British spelling. For more details
on Chicago Style, please see www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.
International Review of Environmental History is published by ANU Press

Acton ACT 2601, Australia
Email: anupress@anu.edu.au
This title is available online at press.anu.edu.au
ISSN 2205-3204 (print)
ISSN 2205-3212 (online)
Printed by Griffin Press
Cover design and layout by ANU Press.
Cover image: Wynston Cooper, Reflections of Jade, March 2009. Image of Lan Yuan : AGarden
of Distant Longing, Dunedin, New Zealand. Image kindly reproduced with the permission ofWynston
Cooper.
2015 ANU Press
Editor:
James Beattie, History, University of Waikato & Research Associate, Centre for Environmental History,
Associate Editor:
Brett M. Bennett, University of Western Sydney
Editorial Board:

Maohong Bao, Peking University

Greg Barton, University of Western Sydney
Tom Brooking, University of Otago
Nicholas Brown, The Australian National
University
Matthew Chew, Arizona State University
Gregory T. Cushman, University of Kansas
Vinita Damodaran, University of Sussex
Rohan DSouza, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Sonja Duempelmann, Harvard University
Jim Fleming, Colby College
Guorong Gao, Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences
Andrea Gaynor, University of Western
Australia
Tom Griffiths, The Australian National
University
Eugenia Herbert, Mount Holyoke College
Peter Holland, University of Otago
Katie Holmes, La Trobe University
Adrian Howkins, Colorado State University
Tom Isern, North Dakota State University

Nancy Jacobs, Brown University
Ryan Tucker Jones, University of Auckland
Peter Lavelle, Temple University
Joseph Lawson, Newcastle University
Robert B. Marks, Whittier College
Edward Melillo, Amherst College
Ruth Morgan, Monash University
Emily OGorman, Macquarie University
Hiroki Oikawa, Yokohama National
University
Jos Pdua, Federal University of Rio
Eric Pawson, University of Canterbury
Ulrike Plath, University of Tallinn
Simon Pooley, Imperial College London
Libby Robin, The Australian National University
Fei Sheng, Sun Yat-Sen University
Lance van Sittert, University of Cape Town
Paul Star, University of Waikato
Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University
Mei Xueqin, Tsinghua University
International Review of Environmental History is published with the support of the Centre for Environmental
History, The Australian National University: ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/about/. It is also supported
by the Historical Research Unit: www.waikato.ac.nz/fass/study/subjects/history/available-papers; Faculty
of Arts and Social Sciences; and the Environmental Research Institute: www.waikato.ac.nz/eri/, University
of Waikato, New Zealand.
About the Journal

International Review of Environmental History takes an interdisciplinary and global approach to
environmental history. It publishes on all thematic and geographical topics of environmental history, but
especially encourages articles with perspectives focused on or developed from the southern hemisphere
and the global south. This includes but is not limited to Australasia, East and South East Asia, Africa and
South America.
International Review of Environmental Historys editorial board includes historians, scientists, and
geographers who work on environmental history and the related disciplines of garden history and
landscape studies. This methodological breadth distinguishes International Review of Environmental
History from other environmental history journals, as does its attempt to draw together cognate research
areas in garden history and landscape studies.
The journals goal is to be read across disciplines, not just within history. We encourage scholars to
think big and to tackle the challenges of writing environmental histories across different methodologies,
nations, and timescales. We embrace interdisciplinary, comparative, and transnational methods, while still
recognising the importance of locality in understanding these global processes.
The Centre for Environmental History at The Australian National University sponsors the journal, and
ANUPress will publish hardcopy and free electronic versions of the journal. It is also supported by the
Historical Research Unit; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; and the Environmental Research Institute,
University of Waikato, New Zealand. Our open-access policy means that articles will be available free to
scholars around the world, ensuring high citation rates and impact in and beyond the field of history.
International Review of Environmental History is happy to consider future special issues focusing on
themes drawn from conferences or collaborations.
Submission Details
Please send article submissions or abstracts to the Editor, Dr James Beattie, History, University of Waikato,
Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand. Email: jbeattie@waikato.ac.nz.
Abstracts should be no more than 200 words, and include a list of keywords. Articles should be in the
range 5,000 to 8,000 words (including footnotes), although longer submissions may be considered after
consultation with the editor.
Style and referencing: please use footnotes in Chicago Style, and follow British spelling. For more details
on Chicago Style, please see www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
James Beattie
Ecologists, Environmentalists, Experts, and the Invasion

of the Second Greatest Threat
Matthew K. Chew
Environmental Disturbance Triggering Infestations of Gorse,

Rabbits, and Thistles inSouthern New Zealand: 1850to 1980
Peter Holland and Guil Figgins
Environmental Non-Government Organisations inChina

since the 1970s
Sheng Fei
Hungry dragons: Expanding the Horizons of Chinese

Environmental HistoryCantonese gold-miners in colonial
New Zealand, 1860s1920s
James Beattie
(Re)Interpreting exotic plantation forestry in 1920sNew Zealand

Michael Roche
Thomas Potts and the Forest Question: Conservation

and Development in New Zealand in the 1860s
Paul Star
1
7
41
81
103
147
173
INTRODUCTION
JAMES BEATTIE
History
University of Waikato
and Associate of the
Centre for Environmental History
Welcome to the first volume of International Review of Environmental History.

The volumes six articles showcase the core aims of the journal by presenting
a breadth of themes and disciplinary perspectives over a range of geographical
regions and environmental types. They also present bold, new interpretations
that aim to push the methodological and geographical boundaries of
environmental history, while at the same time speaking across disciplines. It is a
healthy statement of our field, I think, that three of the six articles in this volume
are by scholars who are not environmental historianstwo bio-geographers, an
ecologist, and an historical geographer.
Matt Chews stimulating article leads the volume. In Ecologists,
Environmentalists, Experts, and the Invasion of the Second Greatest
Threat, Chewfrom Arizona State Universitypresents a detailed analysis
of the scientific findings underlying the development of invasion biology, and
concludes that the claims made for it as representing the second greatest threat
to biodiversity are simply wrong. In an exercise in scientific hermeneutics,
Chew traces the various claims for the importance of invasion biology back
to the work of Edward O. Wilson and to the papers on which he based his
interpretations. Chews analysis of the slippages and elisions which occur when
both analysing and citing work is an important reminder of the significance
of our scholarship to the shaping of government policy, the setting of public
debate, and the establishment of sub-disciplines.
The second article of this volume remains with the theme of ecology.
InEnvironmental Disturbance Triggering Infestations of Gorse, Rabbits,
and Thistles in Southern New Zealand: 1850 to 1980, University of Otago
bio-geographers Peter Holland and Guil Figgins present a fascinating ecological
reconstruction of the impacts of introduced rabbits and weeds in southern New
Zealand. This detailed reconstruction, based on painstaking readings of farm
and station diaries, allows them to examine the environmental factors which
permitted rabbits to thrive in certain parts of the region but not in others.
Through the application of ecological analysis to historical evidence, they
identify the pathways of rabbit dispersal and the role of such factors as vegetation
1
International Review of Environmental History Volume 1, 2015
clearance and infrastructure in creating conditions favourable to the spread of

rabbits. Their work demonstrates, as they note, that ecological theory, with its
emphasis on interactions and interconnections between living things and their
environments, can deepen our understanding of the spread, establishment, and
dominance of these three introduced organisms after episodes of environmental
disturbance, natural as well as artificial, have created opportunities for them
to thrive. Their findings have great relevance now as southern New Zealand
rabbit populations recover from the impacts of rabbit calicivirus disease (RCD),
introduced in the late 1990s.
The third article reflects two particularly important dimensions of Chinas
recent growth: the environmental costs of rapid industrialisation, and the
corresponding emergence of environmental groups. Indicative of the broader
growth of environmental history in China is membership of the Association for
East Asian Environmental History, which has increased from 193 in 2009 to 376
by May 2014.1 In Environmental Non-Government Organisations in China
since the 1970s, Fei Sheng , of Sun Yat-sen University, China, surveys the
rise of environmental groups in China over the last 45 years. Fei explains their
rise, in part by pointing to modernisations growing environmental and health
impacts, as well as greater levels of international co-operation and the emergence
of the Internet. While political challenges remain, Fei is optimistic that among
Chinas rising generations, greater awareness of environmental issues and better
scientific training will ensure that environmental protection is strengthened in
the future.
My own articleHungry dragons: Expanding the Horizons of Chinese
Environmental HistoryCantonese gold-miners in colonial New Zealand,
1860s1920sseeks to incorporate Chinese migrants into the bigger picture of
settlement, development, and environmental change that occurred across the
British Empire. It emphasises Chinese entrepreneurs use of colonial and Chinese
capital to remake environments in Otago and southern China, and how this in
turn created local, national, and international resource demand. A focus on
Cantonese in New Zealand also underlines the important role of Pacific resource
frontiers as hinterlands for the coastal province of Guangdong, in contrast to the
importance of land frontiers for much of the rest of China. Aswell, I examine
what Chinese environmental impacts in colonial New Zealand can reveal of
Chinas own environmental history.
The final two articles remain in New Zealand, and present revisionist accounts
of, respectively, disciplinary interpretation and global resource shortages of
relevance and interest to scholars world-wide. In (Re)interpreting Exotic
1 Membership, Association for East Asian Environmental History, www.aeaeh.org/membership.htm,
accessed 30 May 2015.
2
Introduction
Plantation Forestry in 1920s New Zealand, Michael Roche of Massey

University revisits historical debates about the rise of exotic timber plantations
in New Zealand in order to assess why timber plantations came to constitute
such a large percentage of New Zealands twentieth-century timber production.
Roches paper is part of a wider debate about the role of plantations forest
policy more generally throughout the British world, and now, the developing
world. His article also provides a fascinating discussion of how disciplinary
differencesin this case, among historical geographers and environmental
historiansand differences in periodisation can affect interpretations of
continuity and discontinuity in the transition from nineteenth- to twentiethcentury forest policy.
Paul Stars article, Thomas Potts and the Forest Question: Conservation
and Development in New Zealand in the 1860s, reinterprets the first
call for forest conservation in New Zealand. This revisionist article seeks to
explain the origins of forest conservation in New Zealand, a subject that has
received attention from several prominent scholars, including Graeme Wynn,
Michael Williams, and Michael Roche. Star warns against viewing Potts call
for forest conservation and tree-planting as proto-environmentalism because,
he says, different factors were at play, most notably, he argues, the doctrine of
waste, which applied also to other comparable colonial societies such as the
UnitedStates.
Together, the contributions uphold the journals goal to be read across disciplines
and to encourage scholars to think big and to tackle the challenges of writing
environmental histories across different methodologies, nations, and timescales. The contributors to this volume embrace interdisciplinary, comparative,
and transnational methods, while still recognising the importance of locality in
understanding these global processes.
Journal Aims
Before closing, I will summarise the journals aims, and look ahead to the next
volume. While the journal publishes on all thematic and geographic topics
pertaining to environmental history, the journal developed to strengthen
environmental history in the southern hemisphere and the Global South.
The simple reason was that no specific journal actively catered to Australia,
New Zealand, India, Africa and South and Central America, as well as East and
South East Asia. The expertise of the editorial board reflects the focus of the
journal on these areas as well as broader global environmental issues.
A second key aim of the journal is to break down the barriers dividing wealthy
and poor scholars, students, and readers. The journal eschews subscription
fees and is freely available as an open-access publication. (For traditionalists,
there is also a print-on-demand option.) This upholds some of the fundamental
ideals of the Academy, regarding the dissemination, encouragement, and free
exchange of ideas. It is also backed by research which has revealed that the high
access costs to academic journals unfairly disadvantages scholars and students
working in places like South America, South East Asia, and Africa, many of
whose universities often cannot afford to subscribe to expensive journals.2
A third motivation is to provide a forum for highly originaleven contentious
scholarship that promises to reshape the field or which offers bold overviews of
particular sub-fields of help to teachers or students approaching a topic for
the first time. A particular advantage of an online journal such as this is that it
enables publication of scholarly articles that may be longer than most journals
accept, or which may contain a large number of high-quality images.
The Next Volume

Preparation for the next volume of International Review of Environmental
History is already well underway and I have received six submissions.
Two have been referred and accepted for publication: Tsui-jung Liu and
I-chun Fan, The Colonist Land System in Xinjiang during the Qing
Dynasty: An Environmental History Perspective; and Joanna Bishop,
NewPerspectives on Methodology in Garden History.
Acknowledgements
It is a great honour to be this journals first editor, and I am indebted to the
support of many in making this publication possible. International Review
of Environmental History is published with the support of the Centre for
Environmental History, The Australian National University, whose Director,
Professor Tom Griffiths, has enthusiastically backed this venture from the
outset. In 2013, Professor Bruce Clarkson, Director of Environmental Research
Institute, University of Waikato, granted me the time to devote to planning and
preparing the journal by giving me teaching buy-out. I also thank Professor
Greg Barton, who while at The Australian National University, initiated
discussions with ANU Press about the journal and provided a cracking copy
2 Much of this scholarship is summarised in: Right to Research Coalition, Why Open Access?
www.righttoresearch.org/learn/whyOA/index.shtml#Developing_Countries, accessed May 2015.
4
Introduction
editor. Brett M. Bennett, Associate Editor, has taken a lead in soliciting papers
and in reading and commenting on material, and I am especially grateful to
him, and my supportive and active Editorial Board, for permitting me to test
ideas and share material with them. Further support for the journal has also
come through the Historical Research Unit, University of Waikato. Finally, I am
thankful for the copy editing skills of Ina Mae Barton and Austin Gee, and for
the permission from Wynston Cooper for use of one of his photographs for the
cover of the journal. I also thank ANU Press Editor Emily Tinker and her staff
for their support and professionalism.
James Beattie, Editor
Hamilton, June 2015
ECOLOGISTS,
ENVIRONMENTALISTS, EXPERTS,
AND THE INVASION OF THE
SECOND GREATEST THREAT
MATTHEW K. CHEW
Arizona State University
Abstract
The commonplace, quantitative assertion that invasions of exotic (introduced)
organisms constitute the second greatest threat of species extinction debuted in
Edward O. Wilsons 1992 book, The Diversity of Life. Based only on three interrelated
publications summarising concerns about the conservation status of North American
freshwater fishes, Wilson laconically extended the claim to planetary significance. This
inspired the most-cited article ever published in the American journal BioScience,
subsequently underpinning thousands of peer-reviewed publications, government
reports, academic and popular books, commentaries, and news stories. While
carefully recounting the origin, promotion, and deployment of the second greatest
threat, I argue that its uncritical acceptance exemplifies confirmation bias in scientific
advocacy: an overextended claim reflexively embraced by conservation practitioners
and lay environmentalists because it apparently corroborated one particular, widely
shared dismay about modern societys regrettable effects on nature.
Keywords: invasion biology, Edward O. Wilson, invasive species.

In recent centuries, and to an accelerating degree during our generation, habitat
destruction is foremost among the lethal forces, followed by the invasion of
exotic animals.1
Edward O. Wilson, 1992
[O]n reflection I think that assertion [that alien species constitute the second
greatest global threat to biodiversity] has been debunked so often (yet is endlessly
repeated) that it no longer deserves the status of a myth, and is best described
merely as a straightforward lie.2
Ken Thompson, 2014
1 Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
2 Ken Thompson, Where Do Camels Belong?: The Story and Science of Invasive Species (London: Profile,
2014), 4748.
In 1992, the discourse of conservation biology acquired a new axiom, thanks

largely to the influence of Edward O. Wilson: Habitat loss is the single greatest
threat to biodiversity, followed by the spread of alien species.3 Researchers
concerned about the spread of alien species adopted Wilsons statement and
routinely began to insert some version of it in the introductory remarks of their
publications. The idea of the second greatest threat has persisted in peerreviewed literature ever since, despite significant criticisms of its empirical
merits. Outside academic circles the statement has become an ingrained
orthodoxy, repeated and amplified in government agency plans and policy
papers, reports by non-governmental organisations, research solicitations, press
releases, and direct public information.
A historical perspective offers a useful window to understand the origins and
persistence of this idea. This article argues that the trope of the second greatest
threat became established in conservation biology and invasion biology because
it was a classic confirmation bias that appealed to the belief and activism of its
practitioners and adherents. Without denying the effects of biotic redistributions
via human agency and subsequent ecological adjustments, it warns against
heuristic, categorical representations of alien or invasive species as demons
that have breached the gates of paradise, defilers that can never properly belong
inside them.4 The conviction that there are alien species (loosely modelled on
the nationality of people) denatured by experiencing human transportation is
morbidly fascinating but theoretically weak.5 And asserting that these alien
species invade, while idiomatically convenient, is objectively obsolete, like
saying the sun rises. It seems like a sentimental throwback to the deterministic
rules of prehistoric species occurrence propounded by the ecologist Frederic
Clements.6 The threat of an overabundant, insistent nature is just as troubling
as that of a sickly, waning nature. Combined, they have been used to conjure
the crisis of nature forced into civil war, and facilitated the rise of a new, expert
chorus of regret and recrimination.
3 David S. Wilcove, David Rothstein, Jason Dubow, Ali Phillips, and Elizabeth Losos, Quantifying threats
to imperiled species in the United States, BioScience 48 (1998): 60715.
4 Invasion biologists and their allies routinely invoke paradise, as in Daniel Simberloff, Donald C. Schmitz,
and Tom C. Brown, eds., Strangers in paradise: impact and management of nonindigenous species in Florida
(Washington DC: Island Press, 1997). For a discussion of the permanence of alienness and other attributes
acquired in the process of becoming non-native, see Matthew K. Chew and Andrew L. Hamilton, The rise
and fall of biotic nativeness, a historical perspective, in Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology: The Legacy of Charles
Elton, ed. David M. Richardson (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2011), 3547.
5 Chew and Hamilton, The Rise and fall of biotic nativeness.
6 Frederic E. Clements (18741945) was a pioneering American plant ecologist who proposed a
superorganismic theory of vegetation succession that has been discredited in its rigid developmental details
but remains one of the fields most influential conceptions. See, for example, Sharon Kingsland, The Evolution
of American Ecology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
8
Ecologists, Environmentalists, Experts, and the Invasion of the Second Greatest Threat
Conservation biology favours threat narratives because its tenets explicitly

include both scientific and environmentalist commitments that are mutually
constitutive of the discipline. Its practitioners believe that they work in a crisis
discipline, which means that they must act [often] before knowing all the
facts.7 The assumption that conservation biology solves crises, preferably before
they happen, has meant that the field provides a meaningful career choice for
many people who want to improve the world or to save nature. But studying the
environment with the primary goal of saving it entails applying values that are
difficult or impossible to support empirically, and is an approach that generates
susceptibility to confirmation bias. Moreover, it requires the construction of
an ideal state of nature from which we can aim to restore or conserve against
change. There is little reason to assume that scientists today are any better than
those of yesteryear at correctly gauging how nature should be, because such
statements assume value judgments that have changed over time and space.
The assumption that introduced species are the second greatest threat (as opposed
to first or 10th) relies on the assumption that we can measure biodiversity and
then extrapolate the risks to individual species and all species as a whole. Itis,
quite simply, a metaphor for a variety of phenomenanot only apples and
oranges, but every single species on Earth!that simply cannot be measured
without huge errors. The notion that we can quantify and rank threats to
biodiversity exemplifies the interest in using science to achieve the goal of
preserving nature. Like earlier attempts to find Frederic Clements climax
community or John Phillips biotic community, the attempt to define biodiversity
has proven illusive. Scholars have attempted to summarise, constrain, or dictate
what biodiversity means, but to little apparent effect.8 It seems to be an ineffable
liquid that takes the shape of any vessel it purportedly occupies while lending it
an attractive tint. That is not inconsistent with an observation by the founder of
the term, Walter Rosen, who quipped that biodiversity was obtained by taking
the logical out of biological to transform an object of scientific investigation
into an object of advocacy.9
7 Michael E. Soul, What is conservation biology? BioScience 35 (1985): 72734.

8 See, for example, David Takacs, The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996); Timothy J. Farnham, Saving Natures Legacy: Origins of the Idea of Biological
Diversity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Daniel P. Faith, Biodiversity, in The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2008 ed., plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/
biodiversity, accessed 13 June 2014; James Maclaurin and Kim Sterelny, What is biodiversity? (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2008); Jos Luiz de Andrade Franco, The concept of biodiversity and the history
of conservation biology: From wilderness preservation to biodiversity conservation, Histria [So Paulo]
(2013): 2148.
9 Walter Rosen, quoted in Takacs, The Idea of Biodiversity, 37. Takacs interpreted this comment as ironic,
but that should not be taken to suggest it was flippant or untrue.
9
Social scientists recognise that the field of ecology (the forerunner and main
core of conservation biology and invasion biology) has been metaphor-intensive
since its inception.10 It is tempting to make allowances for threats to biodiversity
as a sort of interim metaphorical muddle destined someday to be sorted out
in a more principled fashion.11 In his 2011 book, Metaphors for Environmental
Sustainability, Brendon Larson examined how two prominent scientists have
recently coined [problematically] resonant metaphors that have drawn media
attention. He proceeded by assuming his subjects use these metaphors with
the best intention, to make change in the world.12
This paper focuses specifically on the origin and spread of the second greatest
threat metaphor, first in Wilsons writings, and later in conservation biology
and invasion biology scholarship. There is little evidence to suggest that the
second greatest threat was self-consciously metaphorical. That option is
effectively unavailable to conservation biologists because the practice is blind
to its own subjective judgments about what they conceive to be an ideal state
of nature, which underpins the disciplines core values. This explains much of
the so-called controversy in the field of invasion biology about whether there
should be distinctions between native and alien species. Millions of dollars
of funding, patronage, and careers are on the line if this narrative changes.
Havingused the rhetoric of threats to justify funding and policy, there is no
turning back for adherents.
Admittedly, there is no evidence to indicatenor claim made in this paper
that the authors who constructed, promoted, or cited the second greatest threat
did so maliciously, or with intent to deceive. Wilson and his followers believe
that there is a destructive agency inherent in introduced species that are able to
invade and restructure ecosystems and economies. There has been good reason
to worry about the impacts of introduced species. The problem is not so much in
seeing specific instances of introduced species as being problematic, but rather
in the idea that there is a category of alien species that is somehow one of the
greatest threats to the worlds ecological and economic stability.
10 Matthew K. Chew and Manfred D. Laubichler, Natural enemiesMetaphor or misconception?, Science

301 (2003): 5253.
11 Chew and Laubichler, Natural Enemies; also see Joel B. Hagen, An Entangled Bank: The Origins
ofEcosystem Ecology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 1214.
12 Brendon M. H. Larson, Metaphors for environmental sustainability (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press,2011), 27.
10
Edward O. Wilson: An environmentalists progress

The deployment of soldiers during World War II acquainted many young men
from temperate Allied countries with the ecology of tropical Pacific islands,
such as Hawaii and Guam, among others. William L. Brown Jr. was one such
American soldier who survived the Pacific Theatre only to gravitate back as
a researcher. Serving as a technician in the US Army Air Forces 36th Malaria
Survey Unit apparently whetted his appetite for studying insects. He completed
a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Entomology followed in 1950 by a PhD
from Harvard.13 Brown was instrumental in luring Edward O. Wilson to graduate
studies at Harvard, and in redirecting Wilsons taxonomic research interests
from the ants of Alabama to the more widely distributed trapjaw Dacetine
ants.14 Escaping his socially insular Gulf Coast roots was a requisite step on the
path toward Wilsons avowed goal at age 17 of becoming an important scientist,
and turning his attention to the fate of the world.15
In the 1960s and 1970s, Wilson accumulated academic credentials and honours,
achieving his goal of becoming an important scientist through his involvement
in developing and promoting the ideas of Island Biogeography and Sociobiology.
But he eschewed environmental activism until 1980, unforgivably late, as
he described it.16 Wilson attributed his environmental epiphany to Norman
Myers estimates of tropical rainforest destruction rates in The Sinking Ark
(1979), apolemic after the fashion of Charles Eltons The Ecology of Invasions
(1958) and Rachel Carsons Silent Spring (1962). None of these were scholarly
books written for technically adept audiences. Rather, they were deftly written
polemical tracts by authors who warned about the impending environmental
catastrophe that they saw unfolding as a result of human action. How scientific
their verdicts were, and even how scientifically these writers understood what
they feared, was never as important as how well they made their fears resonate
with those of their readers.
Wilsons first intentional foray into environmentalist commentary was a short
piece commissioned by the Harvard Magazine. There he wrote, the one process
ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic
and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.17 This comment
summarises the professional fears of a taxonomist: that things will goand go
13 Ted R. Schultz, Richard B. Root, and Thomas Eisner, William L. Brown, Jr.: June 1, 1922March 30,
1997, in Memorial Statements, Cornell University Faculty 199697 (Ithaca, NY: Office of the Dean of the
Faculty, Cornell University, 1997), 1216, ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/18230/2/Brown_
Stuart_M_Jr_1996.pdf, accessed 28 November 2014.
14 Edward O. Wilson, Naturalist (Washington DC, Island Press, 1984), 132.
15 Wilson, Naturalist, 99.
17 Edward O. Wilson, Resolutions for the 80s, Harvard Magazine 83 (1980): 21.
11
awayunclassified. In 1985, Wilson echoed a strategy Elton had attempted in

inter-war Britain, using his academic pulpit to call for a comprehensive, publicly
funded inventory of biota in the name of protecting what was deemed to be in
the public interest. Wilsons vision of a full-employment plan for taxonomists
was more expansive than Eltons. The Englishman wanted an accounting of
British animal populations.18 The Americans proposal encompassed all life on
the planet.19 Neither mans argument was enthusiastically received at the time.
It would be over two decades before Elton girded his loins for another overt
foray as a public intellectual. But Wilson was on the cusp of a major role in
formulating, and more importantly, promoting the concept of biodiversity.
When writing for general audiences, Wilson rarely shied from sweeping statements,
including his own assertions that his ideas and claims are widely accepted by the
scientific community. In Scientific American, he claimed without substantiation,
[v]irtually all ecologists, and I include myself among them, would argue that every
species extinction diminishes humanity.20 Helikewise asserted that systematists
are in wide agreement that, whatever the absolute numbers, more than half of
the species on earth live in moist tropical forests, and every tropical biologist
has stories of the prodigious variety in this one habitat type.21 Wilsons claims
of representing consensus have been coupled with vagueness. After discussing
his idea that human nature is rooted in heredity, he once continued: [i]n the
1970s a great many ordinary people believed these hereditarian propositions to
be more or less true.22 Boththe source of the information and the meaning of
the statement are obscure; nevertheless, it sounds significant, and carries the
confident authority of the important scientist.
Wilson provided a clue for interpreting such vague yet global pronouncements
in the final chapter of his 1994 autobiography, Naturalist. Discussing biophilia,
his hypothesis that humans innately bond with other species, he wrote: [b]y the
ordinary standards of natural science, the evidence for biophilia remains thin,
and most of the underlying theory of its genetic origin is highly speculative.
Still, the logic leading to the idea is sound, and the subject is too important
to neglect. 23 Thus, Wilson excused (at least) his own lack of scientific rigour
by suggesting that an ideaone of his ideasis so important that it should
be believed now and examined later. He could do this because he is, indeed,
an important scientist. Island Press trumpeted his status on the dust jacket of
Naturalist: Edward O. WilsonUniversity Professor at Harvard, winner of
18 Matthew K. Chew, Ending with Elton: Preludes to Invasion Biology (PhD diss., Arizona State
University,2006), 126.
19 Edward O. Wilson The Biological Diversity Crisis, BioScience 35 (1985): 700706.
20 Edward O. Wilson, Threats to Biodiversity, Scientific American 261 (1989): 10816 (114).
21 Wilson, Threats to Biodiversity, 108, 110.
12
two Pulitzer prizes, eloquent champion of biodiversityis arguably one of

the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His career represents
both a blueprint and a challenge to those who seek to explore the frontiers of
scientific understanding. Popular acceptance of Wilsons importance, whether
via putative-wide agreement or an exclusive writing prize is clearly significant
to Wilson and the industry of Wilson promotion. Environmentalists with or
without academic ecological credentials are his core constituency.
Wilson the scientist participated in a 1964 symposium on the evolutionary
aspects of species introductions. However, biological invasions other than human
incursions do not feature prominently in his environmentalist writings prior to
1992, even though the idea is more than implied by the tenets of theoretical
Island Biogeography.24 Invasions are absent from Resolutions for the 80s [sic]
(1980), Biophilia (1984), and The Biological Diversity Crisis (1985), although
each of these addresses habitat loss and resulting extinctions.25 Invasions are
absent from his foreword and introductory chapter in Biodiversity (1988), where
the topic is subsequently mentioned or covered by other authors. Invasions
went unmentioned in his published 1988 dialogue with Edward Lueders and
writer Barry Lopez.26 In 1989s Threats to Biodiversity, Wilson finally invoked
the example of the intentional introduction of a new large predator, the Nile
perch (Lates niloticus) to Lake Victoria. He mentions that [t]he list of such
biogeographic disasters is extensive, without elaborating. 27
By 1990, Wilson acquired the habit of deploying the four horsemen of the
(biblical) apocalypse to symbolise environmental catastrophe. His first foray
was in a venue appropriate to eschatological speculation: Chronicles, a weapon
in fighting the culture war published by the Rockford Institute, which works
to preserve the institutions of the Christian West: the family, the Church,
and the rule of law; private property, free enterprise, and moral discipline;
high standards of learning, art, and literature.28 For his part, in Chronicles
Wilson christened his horsemen global warming, ozone depletion, toxic
waste accumulation, and mass extinction by habitat destruction.29
24 Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson, The Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1967).
25 Wilson, Resolutions; Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia: The Human Bond With Other Species (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); Edward O. Wilson, The biological diversity crisis: A challenge to
science, Issues in Science and Technology2 (1988): 2029.
26 Edward O. Wilson, The Current State of Biological Diversity, in BioDiversity (Washington DC: National
Academy Press, 1988), 318; Edward Lueders, Writing Natural History: Dialogues with Authors (Salt Lake
City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1989), 735.
27 Wilson, Threats to biodiversity.
28 Thomas Fleming, From the President; and Anonymous, Defending Christendom, from About The
Rockford Institute, 201314, www.chroniclesmagazine.org/about/the-rockford-institute, both accessed
28November 2014.
29 Edward O. Wilson, The New Environmentalism, Chronicles 14 (1990): 1618.
13
The advent of the second greatest threat

By the time Wilson entered the Rockford Institutes culture war as an
apocalyptic arms dealer, his 1992 book, The Diversity of Life, must have been
in contemplation, if not preparation. Perhaps influenced by then-recent
publications like Ecology of Biological Invasions of North America and Hawaii
(mentioned in his endnotes), Wilson renamed his horsemen for a chapter called
Biodiversity Threatened and established the shape of things to come:30
[i]n recent centuries, and to an accelerating degree during our generation, habitat
destruction is foremost among the lethal forces, followed by the invasion of exotic
animals. Each agent strengthens the others in a tightening net of destruction.
Inthe United States, Canada, and Mexico, 1,033 species of fishes are known to
have lived entirely in fresh water within recent historical times. Of these, 27,
or 3percent, have become extinct within the past hundred years, and another
265, or 26 percent, are liable to extinction. They fall into one or another of the
categories utilized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
and Natural Resources (IUCN) which publishes the Red Data Books: Extinct,
Endangered, Vulnerable, and Rare. The changes that forced them into declineare:
Destruction of physical habitat
Displacement by introduced species
Alteration of habitat by chemical pollutants
Hybridization with other species and subspecies
Overharvesting
73% of species
68% of species
38% of species
38% of species
15% of species31
Wilsons categories and percentages invite scrutiny. They are hardly

straightforward. The extents of these lethal forces, these agents, are not
self-evident. Invoking agency raises unanswerable questions. Wilson offers
no further explanation; we are left to fend for ourselves. From a scientific
perspective, his explanation appears cursory, even careless. It seems to exemplify
the tongue-in-cheek concept of proof by blatant assertion, providing scant
justification for any quantitative claim that invasion by exotic animals follows
habitat destruction as a lethal force.32
Overharvesting is perhaps Wilsons most coherent category, though it is less
straightforward than Jared Diamonds (1989) overkill.33 It fails to discriminate
between, for instance, the institutionalised wastage caused by non-target by30 See Harold A. Mooney and James A. Drake, eds., Ecology of Biological Invasions of North America and
Hawaii (New York: Springer, 1986).
31 Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), 25354.
32 Joel E. Cohen, On the Nature of Mathematical Proofs, in A Random Walk in Science, ed. Robert L. Weber
and Eric Mendoza (New York: Crane Rusak, 1973), 3436.
33 Jared Diamond, Overview of Recent Extinctions in Conservation for the Twenty-first Century. ed. David
Western and Mary Pearl (New York, Oxford University Press, 1989), 37-41.
14
catch, industrial-scale exploitation, and locally intensive subsistence-level

consumption. When collapsed, the category provides little explanatory value,
but explaining is not the point. Eliciting remorse by assigning blame is the
point.
Destruction of physical habitat suggests many possibilities, not all of which
are anthropogenic. Wilson excluded the effects of chemical pollutants, except
perhaps those (like acid mine drainage) that might be said to physically destroy
rather than alter habitats. The line between habitat alteration and destruction
is difficult to draw when the operative context is extinction; a habitat altered
to the extent that a population fails seems tantamount to a habitat destroyed.
Alteration of habitat by chemical pollutants seems understandable, at least as
long as the array of potential sources, identities, and effects of such pollutants is
left unspecified. Are we to assume that Wilson meant something like chemicals
not typically generated except by industrial process, or rarely found in
detectable quantities? Does habitat alteration differ from physical destruction
as a matter of degree? If so, can both result in extinction, or does extinction
signal actual destruction of habitat?
Displacement by introduced species is simultaneously vague and over-precise.
The ecological implication of displacement is that individuals or populations
have been competitively excluded from either a functional or geographical
niche, an effect that is easier to imagine than demonstrate.34 Furthermore, in
any ecologically strict sense, displacement does not include trophic exploitation
(being eaten) by a new predator, a commonly feared outcome of introducing
game-fish species. Wilson did not disclose whether his introduced species were
purposely stocked, or if they were themselves fishes, or indeed even animals.
Hybridization with other species and subspecies is a surprisingly terse
construction. It glosses over two necessary questions: the perennially debated,
what constitutes a species? and the subtler, but more interesting, what
constitutes extinction? If species are demarcated by an inability to interbreed,
can individuals representing two real species mate and produce offspring?
We know that some, such as horses and donkeys, can be mated to produce
viable, but infertile, mules. But in a widely discussed case, the descendants
of introduced American ruddy ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) are interbreeding
with European white-headed ducks (O. leucocephala), and producing fertile
34 See, for example, Mark A. Davis, Biotic globalization: does competition from introduced species threaten
biodiversity?, BioScience 53 (2003): 48189; Dov F. Sax, John J. Stachowicz, and Steven D. Gaines, eds.,
Species invasions: insights into ecology, evolution and biogeography (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005).
15
offspring.35 Were these two really different species, or were they essentially two
populations denied access to each other long enough to diverge perceptibly to
the human eye and mapmaker, but in reproductively inconsequential ways?
The population resulting from this reunion is neither ruddy nor white-headed,
as was once conceived. But it is still a population of ducks. Left unmolested,
itmight be fully capable of persisting. If we insist that they were two species,
did the merger produce an extinction event? The answer is yes according to
one criterion (the white-headed duck might no longer occur as such), and no,
because those ducks mated and passed their genes to successive generations;
noline of inheritance ended. It is a matter of convention, like patrilineal naming.
In some social traditions, a family giving birth to a generation of daughters
cannot continue in name; but through motherhood, each females genes will
flow into the future along with the name-begetting fathers.
Philosophers Matthew Haber and Andrew Hamilton formally distinguished
between these different kinds of events, calling them Type I and Type
II extinctions. Type I extinctions represent one fundamental fear of
environmentalism: for whatever reason, organisms become rare, reproduction
success diminishes, and lineages ultimately fail. In Type II extinctions, lineages
merge or diverge as reproduction continues, and labels change; whether new taxa
subsume or succeed others is up to the classifier.36 By including hybridisation
in his list of threats, Wilson conflated the two extinction concepts; perhaps
without noticing, certainly without giving notice to his readers. As will become
evident, this was not the only tacit component of Wilsons claim, nor was it the
most problematic.
Wilsons numbers added up to 232 per cent, so (as he went on to confirm)
his lethal agents coexist or even co-operate. We might have hoped for some
discussion of common or inevitable combinations, but none was forthcoming.
Some primary effects would seem to render secondary agents insignificant.
Forexample, reservoir impoundment replaces one physical habitat with another.
Habitats for river fish are thereby destroyed, but in the process, lake fish
habitats are created. Populations of river fishes will persist in a reservoir only if
35 Judith M. Rhymer and Daniel Simberloff, Extinction by hybridization and introgression, Annual
Review of Ecology and Systematics 27 (1996): 83109; Kay Milton, Ducks out of water: Nature conservation as
boundary maintenance, in Natural Enemies: PeopleWildlife Conflicts in Anthropological Perspective, ed. John
Knight (London: Routledge, 2000), 22946.
36 Matthew H. Haber and Andrew L. Hamilton, Coherence, consistency, and cohesion: Clade selection
in Okasha and beyond, Philosophy of Science 72 (2005): 102640. Haber and Hamilton point out that
their extinction typology is detectable in literature that would have been available to Wilson well before
TheDiversity of Life was published; notably, Mark Wilkinson, A Commentary on Ridleys Cladistic Solution
to the Species Problem, Biology and Philosophy 5 (1990): 43346.
16
the newly prevailing conditions still effectively meet their habitat requirements.
The arrival of lake fishes in a reservoir might correlate with an extinction of
river fishes without actually causing it.
Ecologically, it does not matter whether a fish species arrives in a reservoir by
surviving the damming process, by swimming downstream from an unaffected
reach, by dumping from a bait bucket, or by pumping from a government
hatcherys tanker truck. Any persisting population demonstrates that habitat
exists; non-persistence demonstrates otherwise. Even in the latter case, some
mature individuals may survive without breeding much, or at all, or where
survivorship of young to adulthood has ceased. Such populations must dwindle,
as has been the case for several fishes in the serially impounded, much-diverted,
and much-diminished lower Colorado River. Researchers familiar with these
cases have stated that [w]e have no doubt that if nonnative species vanished,
the big-river fishes would persist in todays modified habitats.37 Unfortunately
there is no way to cleanly separate those factors in the real world.
As noted earlier, Edward O. Wilson is not an ichthyologist. He is by training
a myrmecologist, a specialist in ants. What prompted him to construct an
argument of such potential significance with reference to taxa so different from
his invertebrate stock-in-trade? The Diversity of Lifes endnotes, consisting
primarily of parenthetical asides rather than formal citations, mentioned three
salient journal articles, but also suggested that Karsten Hartel, Wilsons colleague
at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, provided the tabular threats
analysis. I emailed Wilson, asking whether he knew of any statement or analysis
prior to his own to the effect that invasive species constituted the second-ranked
cause of extinction. He responded by encouraging me to contact Hartel. Hartel
subsequently confirmed that he provided Wilson with information from the
three articles identified in the book, but baulked at taking responsibility for
Wilsons synthesis.38 Whether Wilson or Hartel came up with the idea, Wilson
ultimately composed and published it. Rather than pressing the matter of
ultimate responsibility any further, I set about attempting to reproduce Wilsons
table of threats, seemingly a matter of reviewing readily available published
material.
There is substantial overlap both in the topics and authorship of the three articles
Wilson listed as sources. Hoping to reduce both repetition and confusion, I refer
to them below by single word proxies. The first article is Conservation Status
of the North American Fish Fauna in Fresh Water by Jack E. Williams and
37 Wendel L. Minckley, Paul C. Marsh, James E. Deacon, Thomas E. Dowling, Philip W. Hedrick, William J.
Matthews, and Gordon Mueller, A conservation plan for native fishes of the lower Colorado River, BioScience
53 (2003): 21934.
38 Edward O. Wilson, email message to author, 6 February 2002; Karsten Hartel, emails to author, 4 June
2004 and 21 June 2004.
17
Robert R. Miller (herein after Conservation). Wilsons (1992) totals of 1,033

species, 27 extinctions and 265 International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN)-listed extant species appeared there.39 The last two numbers derived, in
turn, from the 1990 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals, which included no
data regarding specific threats.40
The second and slightly earlier article, Extinctions of North American Fishes
During the Past Century (herein after Extinctions), is also by Williams and
Miller, this time collaborating with James D. Williams. Wilsons (1992) five
impact-ranking percentages appear here, where they were derived from and
pertain specifically and only to the 40 extinct taxa discussed in Extinctions.41
Like Wilsons threat categories (which should mirror them, but do not
exactly), those in Extinctions were drawn with imprecision. For example, in
a summary table Extinctions describes the Miller Lake lamprey (Entosphenus
minimus) as having been exterminated by chemical alteration or pollution.
The articles text disclosed this as the intended effect of an applied ichthyocide.
Theirnativeness notwithstanding (and, it seems, undetermined at the time), the
lampreys, which prey on other fishes in an unappealing, parasite-like manner,
were considered pests and treated as such.42 Meanwhile, chemical alteration
or pollution applied to 14 other taxa discussed in Extinctions, none of which
were purposely poisoned.
Introduced species (sans Wilsons displacement by) affected 27 taxa in
Extinctions. In all but two of those cases, the presence of introduced species,
when correlated with the absence of a native species, was interpreted as
unquestionably contributing to a natives extirpation. In the remaining two
cases, impacts other than hybridisation (a separate category) were not mentioned.
The species accounts in Extinctions were peppered with rhetorical qualifiers,
such as apparently, believed, contributed, may, presumed, probably
and undoubtedly. The articles attributions of impacts to introduced species
were much too speculative to support any calculation of summary percentages.
The authors of Extinctions seemed eager to identify exotics as plausible
39 Jack E. Williams and Robert R. Miller, Conservation Status of the North American Fish Fauna in Fresh
Water, Journal of Fish Biology 37A (1990): 7985.
40 Red List of Threatened Animals (Geneva: International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 1990).
Thepublished IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals began including threat data in 1994.
41 Robert R. Miller, James D. Williams, and Jack E. Williams, Extinctions of North American Fishes During
the Past Century, Fisheries 14 (1989): 2238.
42 In 1992, reports of the demise of the Miller Lake lamprey proved to be premature. See Oregon Department
of Fish and Game, After 50 years Miller Lake lamprey returns to Miller Lake, www.dfw.state.or.us/news/2010/
july/072710b.asp, accessed 23 June 2014.
18
culprits; like Vichy Captain Louis Renault in the 1942 film Casablanca, they
round[ed] up the usual suspects. In effect, Extinctions was literally an article
of faith in the inferences drawn by its sources.43
The last article Wilson linked to his threats table appeared in the same issue
of Fisheries as Extinctions. Eight authors, led by the same Jack E. Williams
(this time including James D. Williams but not Miller), compiled Fishes of
North America Endangered, Threatened or of Special Concern: 1989 (herein
after Fishes). They included all fishes of the North American continent that
the American Fisheries Society believes should be classified as endangered,
threatened, or of special concern. In summary, they relied on something
resembling US Endangered Species Act status definitions, but not the official
listings.
The complexity of the Fishes authors task was enormous. The dynamic state of
fish taxonomy precluded durable consensus even on the total number of species.
The authors relied on other lists, original data, and discussions with pertinent
agencies and knowledgeable individuals, although their references did not
specifically identify data sources, agencies, individuals, or contact dates.44
The IUCN also relies on knowledgeable individuals. Their lists are scientific
to the uncertain extent that contributed knowledge is scientific. The upshot
is that the numbers published by IUCN, and by the authors of Extinctions,
Fishes, and Conservation were not really data regarding fishes; if anything,
they were data regarding what a group of self-identified, self-selected experts
believed and chose to report about fishes. Sometimes even the best available
information is not really very good. Setting a low bar for Wilson and others to
come, these authors were generating a de facto opinion poll without controlling
the question being asked. That does not render the accounts untrue, but it
does render them unreliable, untestable, and resistant to defensible aggregation.
They represent the beliefs (the doctrine, it seems) of members of a professional
association, butthey are anecdotal.
Fishes included 364 taxa (including species and subspecies) purportedly affected
by five categories of threats. The threats identified did not correspond well either
with categories listed in Extinctions, or with Wilsons (1992) formula (Table1).
Conservation and Extinctions accounted for all of Wilsons numbers and
something like his categories. The dissimilarities between Wilsons categories
and their supposed sources shows that his account elided an idiosyncratic
and irreproducible set of judgments. This was no simple transcription error.
43 Miller et al., Extinctions, 2238.
44 Jack E. Williams, James E. Johnson, Dean A. Hendrickson, Salvador Contreras-Balderas, James D.
Williams, Miguel Navarro-Mendoza, Don E. McAllister, and James E. Deacon, Fishes of North America
Endangered, Threatened, or of Special Concern, Fisheries 14 (1989): 219.
19
Wilson grafted already questionable summary percentages from one article onto
data from another. Then he inserted them into novel categories. By drawing
conclusions contingent on summary numbers extracted from such disparate
and dubious sources, he glossed over numerous taxonomic and procedural
objections. His conceptions could not ameliorate the weaknesses of the data he
relied upon. His sources were not doing science, and neither was he.45
Table 1: A comparison of threat categories.
EXTINCTIONS
Wilson, 1992
FISHES
Physical habitat alteration
Destruction of physical
habitat
Chemical alteration or
pollution
Alteration of habitat by
chemical pollutants
Present or threatened destruction,

modification, or curtailment of
its habitat or range
Introduced species
Displacement by introduced
species
Hybridisation
Hybridisation with other

species and subspecies
Overharvesting
Overharvesting
Overuse for commercial, recreational,

scientific, or educational purposes
(No corresponding
category)
(No corresponding
category)
Restricted range
(No corresponding
category)
(No corresponding
category)
Disease
Other natural or man-made factors

affecting its continued existence
(hybridisation, introduction of exotic
or transplanted species, predation,
competition)
Source: Robert R. Miller, James D. Williams, and Jack E. Williams, Extinctions of North American Fishes
During the Past Century, Fisheries 14 (1989): 2238; Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (New York:
Knopf, 2002), 25354; Jack E. Williams, James E. Johnson, Dean A. Hendrickson, Salvador ContrerasBalderas, James D. Williams, Miguel Navarro-Mendoza, Don E. McAllister, and James E. Deacon, Fishes
of North America Endangered, Threatened, or of Special Concern, Fisheries 14 (1989): 219.
Quantifying threats: The second generation

Under the auspices of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, a self-identified
Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), a worldwide network of experts on
the conservation impacts of invasive species, formed in 1994, two years after
Wilson published his analysis. ISSG granted membership only by invitation,
and made its conservation orientation explicit.46
45 Williams et al., Conservation Status; Miller et al., Extinctions; Williams et al., Fishes of North
America; Williams, email to author, 4 June 2004, did not respond further after I suggested that his results did
not support Wilson, and questioned his category formulations.
46 Mick N. Clout, Introducing ISSGs Newsletter, Aliens 1 (1995): 1.
20
At roughly the same time, Wilson protg Daniel Simberloff, then at Florida
State University, wrote an entry titled Introduced Species for the Encyclopedia
of Environmental Biology (1995). He subsequently cited Introduced Species in
a 1997 book chapter he also authored, as the source for the observation that
[n]onindigenous species are second only to habitat destruction in harming
native communities.47 However, the encyclopedia entry includes no such
claim.48 Simberloffs best guess regarding the citation anomaly is that the pieces
were written concurrently and the claim in question might have appeared in
a preliminary draft but not the final version.49 Questions about where it came
from and where it went thus persist, but since it spawned only two (necessarily
copy-cat) citations, one in a 1998 advocacy document written for public
consumption by a Defenders of Wildlife staff member, another in a 2009 (peerreviewed) article by three Portuguese authors for the journal Ecography, the
lineage appears fairly moribund.50
In 1997, spurred by the 1996 Norway/UN Conference on Alien Species, the
Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), IUCN, and CAB
International (formerly Britains Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux) initiated
the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) to conserve biodiversity and
sustain human livelihoods by minimizing the spread and impact of invasive
alien species, a likewise applications-oriented effort.51 A 1999 book based
on a selection of papers presented at the Norway conference was introduced
by its editors, who immediately resurrected Jared Diamonds (1989) evil
quartet for the occasion.52 Their second paragraph flatly declared, without
attribution that [m]ost biologists consider [alien invasive species] the second
most important threat factor after habitat destruction.53 This statement seems
to have been overlooked by most subsequent authors, but unlike Simberloffs
lost 1985 assertion, itactually appeared in print and has been cited a few times.
The authors of a notable amplification wrote, The Norway / United Nations
47 Daniel Simberloff, Biogeographic approaches and the new conservation biology, in The Ecological Basis
of Conservation, ed. Steward T. A. Pickett, Richard S. Ostfeld, Mosche Shachak, and Gene E. Likens (New York:
Springer, 1997), 27484.
48 Daniel Simberloff, Introduced species, In Encyclopedia of Environmental Biology, vol. 2, ed. William A.
Nierenberg (New York: Academic Press, 1995), 32336.
49 Daniel Simberloff, email to the author, 26 July 2014.
50 See Sara Vickerman, National Stewardship Initiatives: Conservation Strategies for Landowners (Washington,
DC: Defenders of Wildlife, 1998), 55; Luis Reino, Jordi Moya-Larao, and Antnio C. Heitor, Using survival
regression to study patterns of expansion of invasive species: will the common waxbill expand with global
warming?, Ecography 32 (2009): 23746.
51 Diversitas, Global Invasive Species Programme (2011), www.diversitas-international.org/activities/
past-projects/global-invasive-species-programme-gisp. See also Sarah Simons, Closure of the Global Invasive
Species Programme (BCGI Resources Centre, April 13, 2011), www.bgci.org/resources/news/0794, accessed
28November 2014.
52 Jared Diamond, Overview of Recent Extinctions.
53 Odd T. Sandlund, Peter J. Schei, and Aslaug Viken, Introduction: the many aspects of the invasive alien
species problem, in Invasive Species and Biodiversity Management (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 111.
21
Conference on Alien Species considers alien invasive species as the second most
important threat, after habitat destruction, to indigenous biodiversity.54 Still,
only a relative handful of authors have relied on the Norway statement, which
seems to lack any apparent methodological basis.
Nevertheless, by 1999 a nascent discipline of invasion biology was well in
evidence, having generated several anthologies of proceedings and being served
by two specialised peer-reviewed journals, neither of which was ever formally
controlled by ISSG or GISP. Practitioners were also publishing in broader
conservation biology and ecology journals, in regional natural history and
taxon-based journals, and occasionally in the two major high impact generalist
journals, Science and Nature. On 3 February 1999, US Presidential Executive
Order 13112 established a National Invasive Species Council (NISC) and defined
terms including invasive species for purposes of federal management actions.
Given its pedigree of applications-oriented, international, and interdisciplinary
organisations, it was practically inevitable that invasive speciesrelated articles
would appear in inter-organisational journals. One such is BioScience, produced
by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). AIBS membership is
open to individuals, organisations, and institutions, so the content of BioScience
is eclectic by comparison with most journals. Like Nature and Science, BioScience
includes features by science writers, correspondence arising, professional news,
editorials, and book reviews, alongside research articles. Occasional issues are
themed; for example, in 1998 (volume 48) the peer-reviewed articles in numbers
four and nine focused on particular topics. Number eight (August) was more
typical. Its four peer-reviewed articles were titled, in order of appearance,
The Reproductive Biology of Fire Ant Societies, Quantifying Threats to
Imperiled Species in the United States, Animal Clones and Diversity, and
Water for Food Production: Will There Be Enough in 2025?. The second of
these prominently cited Wilsons The Diversity of Life and reified his threat
ranking while expanding it beyond freshwater fishes. It included a statement
that (by the standards of the time) went viral in the discourse of invasion
biology and rapidly became one of its central dogmas.
The lead author of Quantifying Threats to Imperiled Species in the United States
was David Wilcove, an American born shortly after Charles Eltons Ecology of
Invasions began incubating in the library stacks. Wilcove cites a childhood (and
continuing) interest in birds and pre-teenage exposure to the height of the
environmental movement of the early 1970s as his impetus to study biology,
culminating in a 1985 Princeton PhD. Reacting to the anti-environmentalism of
54 Roger Mann and Julia M. Harding, Salinity tolerance of larval Rapana venosa: implications for dispersal
and establishment of an invading predatory gastropod on the North American Atlantic coast, The Biological
Bulletin 204 (2003): 96103.
22
the early Reagan years, he began his professional career studying rare species in
Virginia for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a non-profit, United States-based
organisation. He soon moved to the Wilderness Society and went from there
in 1988 to a position as Senior Ecologist with the Environmental Defense Fund
(EDF). At the EDF his early work focused on describing the practical and legal
challenges of protecting endangered species in the United States. Stating I like
writing in a 1996 interview for the EDF Letter, he demonstrated it with an
impressive output of technical and popular articles, reviews, a recurring column
for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithologys Living Bird magazine, several book
chapters, and in 1999, a book of his own: The Condors Shadow: The Loss and
Recovery of Wildlife in America, with a foreword by Edward O. Wilson.55
Wilcove was one among a throng of late baby boomers sincerely motivated by the
increasing environmental consciousness of the 1960s and 1970s who populated
the enrolment lists of university biology departments and aspired to staff positions
at environmental organisations. The movement had money, but rarely money to
burn, and competition for even the lowest paying jobs was always intense. Those
like Wilcove who had luck, enthusiasm, and the proper academic credentials got
a foot in the door. Fewer found a long-term home behind it. It is difficult to stand
out among so many well-qualified peers. Meanwhile, environmental organisations
have foibles and faults that can dismay true-believing tyros. Wilcove managed to
thrive as well as anyone under such conditions. He established and maintained
connections in the power centres of the groups he worked for, and contact with
the power centres of federal agencies that invited his participation in significant
activities. He simultaneously established himself as a journeyman populariser
through magazine articles, and a capable member of interdisciplinary teams.
Unlike Wilson, Wilcoves personal testimony as an environmentalist included no
mid-life epiphany and road to Damascus conversion to activism, but he had
barely attained mid-life by the time he entered this story.
In 1994, TNC set to work on a tour-de-force report to be titled Precious Heritage:
The Status of Biodiversity in the United States.56 Wilcove and a team of co-authors
whose credentials included tenures in a variety of environmental groups and
55 Anonymous, Pew Fellows: David S. Wilcove, Ph.D., Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation
(1999), accessed 18 October 2002, www.pewmarine.org/PewFellows/pf_WilcoveDavid.html; Anonymous,
Professor David Wilcove, Ecologist, Joins PEIs Faculty [Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton,
NJ], PEI News (Fall 2001): 3, web.princeton.edu/sites/pei/PDFfiles/PEIFallNL2001.pdf, accessed 18 October
2002; David S. Wilcove, Curriculum Vitae, Princeton University (2001), www.eeb.princeton.edu/FACULTY/
Wilcove/cv.pdf, accessed 18 October 2002; David S. Wilcove, Publications by David S. Wilcove, Princeton
University (2001), www.eeb.princeton.edu/FACULTY/Wilcove/Publications.pdf, accessed 18 October 2002;
David S. Wilcove, The Condors Shadow: The Loss and Recovery of Wildlife in America (New York: W. H.
Freeman, 1999).
56 Deborah B. Jensen and Thomas F. Breden, Preface to Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the
United States, ed. Bruce A. Stein, Lynn S. Kutner, and Jonathan S. Adams (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), xiv.
23
academic institutions were tasked with producing a chapter on invasive species.

The volumes lead editor was Bruce Stein, a TNC stalwart who had just co-edited
their booklet, Americas Least Wanted: Alien Species Invasions of U.S. Ecosystems.57
At about the same time, David Wilcove found himself collaborating with Edward
O. Wilson and others, including Jane Lubchenco, (then) future Administrator
of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, on a
perspective article for Science, titled Building a Scientifically Sound Policy for
Protecting Endangered Species.58
Daniel Simberloff generously provided advice on the new TNC book through
participation in project workshops and through analyses of heritage
data.59 Simberloff had recently co-authored Biological Invasions: A Growing
Threat for the National Academy Press Issues in Science and Technology and was
translating Killer Algae, a French biologists narrative of apparent disregardby
the Jacques Cousteau-led Oceanographic Museum in Monacofor a biological
invasion of the Mediterranean Sea.60 He would shortly pen the foreword for
the University of Chicago Presss 2000 reissue of Eltons Ecology of Invasions
by Animals and Plants.61 Simberloff was also co-editing Strangers in Paradise:
Impact and Management of Nonindigenous Species in Florida, with a foreword
by Wilson, for Island Press. In that foreword, Wilson inflated his 1992 claim
about US freshwater fishes by declaring that [o]n a global basis [conservation
biologists] recognize that the two great destroyers of biodiversity are, first,
habitat destruction, and, second, invasion by exotic species.62
TNCs Precious Heritage would not see print until 2000. Wilcoves team finished
their chapter ahead of the curve. In the venerable academic tradition of filling
two CV lines with one publication, they submitted the piece to BioScience,
advisedly, if confusingly, acknowledging it as part of an ongoing collaboration
as part of the forthcoming book and thanking Wilcoves recent collaborator
Jane Lubchenco, among others, for their helpful reviews of earlier versions.
Itwas more than auspiciously timed. Simberloff was also a member of BioSciences
57 Bruce A. Stein and Stephanie R. Flack, Americas Least Wanted: Alien Species invasions of U.S. Ecosystems
(Arlington, VA: The Nature Conservancy, 1996).
58 Thomas Eisner, Jane Lubchenco, Edward O. Wilson, David S. Wilcove, and Michael J. Bean, Building a
scientifically sound policy for protecting endangered species, Science 269 (1995): 123132.
59 Stein, Kutner and Adams, acknowledgements in Precious Heritage, xix.
60 Andre Meinesz, Killer Algae, trans. Daniel Simberloff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Don
C. Schmitz and Daniel Simberloff, Biological Invasions: A Growing Threat, Issues in Science and Technology
13 (1997): 3340.
61 Daniel Simberloff, foreword to The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, by Charles S. Elton
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), viixiv; Wilcove, The Condors Shadow, xiiixv.
62 Edward O. Wilson, foreword to Strangers in Paradise: Impact and Management of Nonindigenous Species in
Florida, ed. Daniel Simberloff, Don C. Schmitz, and T. C. Brown (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,1997), ixx.
24
Editorial Board.63 He does not specifically remember handling the submission,

however, and the current BioScience managing editor reported such information
may have been lost to the ages.64
Quantifying Threats to Imperiled Species in the United States appeared in
BioScience well before its publication in Precious Heritage, where it stands as
chapter eight under the heading Leading Threats to Biodiversity. Although
the two versions are similar in many respects, they are not identical. The book
chapter includes an introductory vignette about the extinction of a Hawaiian
bird, the oo (Moho braccatus), attributed to a combination of causes including
habitat loss and avian malaria, a disease accidentally introduced to the islands
in the 1820s. It also includes a section headed with the title, Horsemen of
the Environmental Apocalypse, which appeared in BioScience sans emphasis.
Afurther nod to Wilson and the equally citable Paul Ehrlich followed in both
versions: [i]n general, scientists agree that habitat destruction is currently the
primary lethal agent (Ehrlich 1998, Wilson 1992) followed by the spread of alien
species (Wilson 1992) [citations in originals]. 65
Wilson, 1992 is The Diversity of Life, and what appeared there was explained
above. Neither quotes nor careful paraphrases, the ideas attributed in this case to
Wilson merely resemble his statements. Wilcoves the spread of alien species is far
more general than either Wilsons invasion of exotic animals or his displacement
by introduced species. Furthermore, although scientists generally agree looks
credibly like a Wilsonism, it cannot be found in the 1992 edition of The Diversity
of Life (although it suggests another possibility, discussed below). It is not clear
until much later in these twin works that the statements attributed to Ehrlich
and Wilson were the hypotheses of their study, or perhaps more appropriately
the thesis of their essay. Returning to comparisons, BioScience readers were
told more about methodology and statistics, and that no anthropogenic threats
were identified for 52 of the species examined. Both versions contain a lengthy
disclaimer, also customised to the needs of each publication and its audience.
Their differences are notable and are emphasised below in bold-face:
BioScience version:
We emphasize at the outset [some eight hundred words into the article] that
there are some important limitations to the data we used. The attribution of a
specific threat to a species is usually based on the judgment of an expert source,
63 Anonymous, masthead in BioScience 44 (1994), number nine and following.

64 Emails to the author from Daniel Simberloff, 26 July 2014, and James Verdier, 13 August 2014.
65 David S. Wilcove, David Rothstein, Jason Dubow, Ali Phillips, and Elizabeth Losos, Quantifying Threats
to Imperiled Species in the United States, BioScience 48 (1998): 60715; David S. Wilcove, David Rothstein,
Jason Dubow, Ali Phillips, and Elizabeth Losos, Leading Threats to Biodiversity: Whats Imperiling U.S.
Species, in Precious Heritage, ed. Stein, Kutner, and Adams, 23954.
25
such as a USFWS [Fish and Wildlife Service] employee who prepares a listing
notice or a state Fish and Game employee who monitors endangered species
in a given region. Their evaluation of the threats facing that species may not be
based on experimental evidence or even quantitative data. Indeed, such data
often do not exist. With respect to species listed under the [US Endangered
Species Act], Easter-Pilcher (1996) has shown that many listing notices lack
important biological information, including data on past and possible future
impacts of habitat destruction, pesticides, and alien species. Depending on the
species in question, the absence of information may reflect a lack of data, an
oversight, or a determination by USFWS that a particular threat is not harming
the species. The extent to which such limitations on the data influence our
results is unknown.66
Precious Heritage version:

There are some important limitations to the data we used. The attribution of a
specific threat to a species is usually based on the judgment of an expert source,
such as a USFWS employee who prepares a listing notice or a state natural
heritage program employee who monitors imperiled species in a given region.
Their evaluation of threats facing that species may not be based on experimental
evidence or quantitative data. Indeed, such data often do not exist. With respect
to species listed under the [US Endangered Species Act], Easter-Pilcher (1996) has
shown that many listing notices lack important biological information, including
data on past and possible future impacts of habitat destruction, pesticides, and
alien species. Depending on the species in question, the absence of information
may reflect a lack of data, an oversight, or a determination that a particular threat
is not harming the species.67
Like their precursors a generation (by reference) removed, Wilcove et al.

confirmed the inevitable consensus. It seems clear that any quantifying
conclusions based on such dubious data are no less dubious. As the saying
goes, the plural of anecdote is not data.68 They could gloss over this problem
in the TNC book; after all, their message was primarily environmental advocacy,
not scientific analysis. But BioScience is published by, and for, professional
biologists. It includes commentaries and editorials, but Quantifying Threats
was published as a research paper, with other research papers in the issue.
Intervention by a BioScience editor may account for the slightly more explicit
wording of the disclaimer in Quantifying Threats. If so, it remains puzzling
that BioScience included an assertive statement in the central column of the
articles first page, emphasised with paragraph borders and a larger, bolder font
(Figure 1).
66 Wilcove et al., Quantifying Threats, 608609.

67 Wilcove et al., Leading Threats to Biodiversity, 241.
68 Economist Roger Brinner of the Parthenon Group claims credit for coining the plural of anecdote phrase
decades ago but cannot himself remember exactly when. Email to author, 20 September 2004.
26
Figure 1: Detail from the first page of Wilcove et al. (1998).

Source: David S. Wilcove, David Rothstein, Jason Dubow, Ali Phillips, and Elizabeth Losos, Quantifying
threats to imperiled species in the United States, BioScience 48 (1998): 60715.
This teaser to journal browsers is, as usual, a direct quote from the body of
the paper. But the quote includes only part of the statement actually made by
Wilcove et al. Here again it is useful to compare the two versions:
BioScience version:
The major findings of this study confirm what most conservation biologists
have long suspected: Habitat loss is the single greatest threat to biodiversity,
followed by the spread of alien species. However, the discovery that nearly half
of the imperiled species in the United States are threatened by alien species
combined with the growing numbers of alien speciessuggests that this
particular threat may be far more serious than many people have heretofore
believed.69
69 Wilcove et al., Quantifying Threats, 614.

27
Precious Heritage version:

The major findings of this chapter confirm what most conservation biologists
have long suspected: Habitat loss is the single greatest threat to biodiversity,
followed by the spread of alien species. However, the discovery that nearly
half of the imperiled species in the United States are threatened by invasive
alienscoupled with the growing numbers of alien speciessuggests that
this particular threat may be far more serious than many people have heretofore
recognized.70
Wilcove et al. thus clearly signalled their satisfaction at confirming a supposedly

broad bias, but gave it a puzzling twist. Their claim most conservation biologists
have long suspected something that may be far more serious than many people
have heretofore believed/recognized approaches the paradoxical, but it might
only be an awkward bit of boundary work disparaging the sceptical.
Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is
that Wilcove et al. either considered the terms alien species and invasive
aliens synonymous or they were comfortable drawing different conclusions for
different audiences. The lexicon of biological invasion has long been criticised
from within and without for its imprecision and militaristic, metaphorical
constitution.71 In an attempt to control the damage, some authors have parsed
the terms alien (= non-native = introduced = non-indigenous) and invasive
such that the latter should be considered a small subset of the former.72 In this
regard, perhaps Quantifying Threats tacitly exemplifies invasion biologys
early rush to claim a precious heritage: identification of their new post-Cold
War alarmism with that of a Cold War Cassandra, the father of animal ecology,
Oxford zoologist Charles S. Elton.
Elton was a proto-environmentalist and occasional populariser of population
ecology who influenced better-known contemporaries, including Aldo Leopold
and Rachel Carson. Even though Elton used and promoted the term invasions,
his views on the matter of introduced species were considerably more complex
and nuanced than those of the distant followers who claimed his legacy.73
Inhis foreword to the otherwise facsimile 2001 reissue of Eltons TheEcology
70 Wilcove et al., Leading Threats, 252.
71 See, for example, Banu Subramaniam, The aliens have landed! Reflections on the rhetoric of biological
invasions, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 2 (2001): 2640; Robert I. Colautti and Hugh J.
MacIsaac, A neutral terminology to define invasive species, Diversity and Distributions 10 (2004): 13541;
Brendon M. H. Larson, The war of the roses: demilitarizing invasion biology, Frontiers in Ecology and the
Environment3 (2005): 495500; Jozef Keulartz and Cor van der Weele, Framing and reframing in invasion
biology, Configurations 16 (2008): 93115.
72 See, for example, Petr Pyek, David M. Richardson, Marcel Rejmnek, Grady L. Webster, Mark
Williamson, and Jan Kirschner, Alien plants in checklists and floras: towards better communication between
taxonomists and ecologists, Taxon 53 (2004): 13143.
73 Chew, Ending with Elton, 27086.
28
of Invasions by Animals and Plants, Simberloff attempted to distance modern

invasion biology from those nuances. As much as anything, Simberloffs purpose
then and in later writings was not to praise Elton, but to bury him: to deemphasise Eltons significance to the nascent discipline, and succeed him as its
de facto leading light.74
Given the strong disclaimers internal repudiation of the papers basis, neither
version of Quantifying Threats recommends itself as a reliable foundation
stone for a scientific subdiscipline. But uniquely among competing proposals
such as Wilsons mindless horsemen, and Diamonds evil quartet, the second
greatest threat became firmly entrenched in both the popular and technical
literature of biological invasions.
Responding to an early abstract of the present paper, Wilcove wrote:
The primary reason we did the study was to see if, in fact, alien species emerged as a
significant threat to biodiversity. Based on the data we obtained from TheNature
Conservancy, the Network of Natural Heritage Programs and Conservation
Data Centers, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, alien species emerged as the
second most frequent threat to imperiled species (after habitat destruction). Ido
not know how E. O. Wilsons written statement about alien species may have
influenced other scientists, but it did affect our analysis. Had the data shown
otherwise, we would not have hesitated to disagree with him.75
Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that Wilcoves team ever contemplated the

prospect of falsifying Wilsons assertion, and both the history of the papers
development and its methodology show that publicly disagreeing with Wilson
was an unlikely outcome. Recall that TNCs Precious Heritage, like Wilcoves
TheCondors Shadow, opened with a Wilson foreword.76
A 1999 reissue of The Diversity of Life included a new foreword of its own, in which
Wilson again inflated his own 1992 claims by stating that [e]xperts generally
agree that on a worldwide basis the causes of extinction, which are virtually
all due to human activity, can be ranked from the top down as follows: habitat
destruction or degradation, the spread of exotic (nonnative) species, pollution,
overharvesting and disease.77 He also rushed to endorse Quantifying Threats
(making him one of the earliest to do so) and repeated its findings: Thedata that
measure the factors endangering U.S. species, as compiled by David S. Wilcove
and his co-workers in 1998 are habitat loss, 88 percent, exotics, 46 percent;
pollution, 20 percent; overharvesting, 14 percent; and disease, 2 percent.
74 Chew, Ending with Elton, 274; Simberloff (personal communication, 2008) concurred with my assessment.
75 David S. Wilcove, email to author, 20 September 2002.
76 As of June 2014, Edward O. Wilson has written forewords to at least forty books, mostly with explicitly
environmentalist themes.
77 Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), xvii.
29
Wilson neither repeated nor mentioned the procedural caveats of Wilcove et

al. And neither Wilson nor his editors apparently fretted over the recursive
logic of allowing a book to reify one of its own claims by citing a paper that
reified its claims by citing an earlier printing of the book. Finally, and even more
strangely, we have at last encountered Wilson making the statement, experts
generally agree which Wilcove et al. seemingly attributed to him before he
made it. There are three likely explanations: (1) coincidence; (2) Wilcove et al.
saw Wilsons 1999 foreword before it was published; and (3) Wilson used the
inflated statement of Wilcove et al. as a basis for inflating his own.
In 2002, I asked Wilson whether he felt Wilcove et al. had appropriately cited
his work, given the differences between his statements in The Diversity of Life
(1992) and the conceptually expanded paraphrase in the BioScience paper.
His response: Yes, I believe it fair to say that specialists are in agreement
that habitat destruction is the primary extinction agent, followed by invasive
species.78 Ithad been 10 years since the original publication of The Diversity
of Life, three since its new foreword, and more than three since the BioScience
article, and here was a third formulation. We have seen that invasive species
does not wholly correspond with exotic or alien species. Wilcoves scientists
are not necessarily Wilsons 2002 specialists or his 1999 experts. Either the
whole idea was very vague, its terminology very fluid, or both. And there was
no certain way to tell whether Wilson felt it was more important to uphold the
alleged consensus founded on his 1992 book than to reflect on it critically in the
presence of a sceptical nobody.
The year 2002 also saw the advent of Wilsons book, The Future of Life, this time
with the straightforward trade publisher Alfred A. Knopf (by then a division
of Random House). Unconstrained by any university association, Wilson could
say whatever his specialist expertise moved him to. He did not mention Wilcove
in the text or endnotes, but devoted part of a chapter to introduced species.
Here, again, he attempted to represent something as a scientific consensus
regarding
the forces that hammer nature everywhere in the world These factors are
summarized by conservation biologists under the acronym HIPPO:
Habitat destruction. Hawaiis forests, for example, have been three-fourths
cleared, with the unavoidable decline and extinction of many species.
Invasive species. Ants, pigs, and other aliens displace the native Hawaiian species.
Pollution. Fresh water, marine coastal water, and the soil of the islands are
contaminated, weakening and erasing more species.
78 Edward O. Wilson, email to author, 10 February 2002.

30
Population. More people means more of all the other HIPPO effects.
Overharvesting. Some species, especially birds, were hunted to rarity and
extinction during the early Polynesian occupation.79
A strained acronym for a poorly wrought taxonomy; but if conservation

biologists had already summarised it thus, Wilson was merely the messenger.
Alas, the acronym HIPPO appears to have originated (at least in print) in
this context. Those who later used it and identified a source, invariably cited
TheFuture of Life. Wilson apparently invented a term while vaguely attributing
it as a common usage, invented a consensus, or both.
In 2004, Jessica Gurevitch and Dianna Padilla of Stony Brook University cited
Quantifying Threats as the major impetus for a paper with a question for a title:
Are invasive species a major cause of extinction? Unlike Quantifying Threats,
the publishing journal chose to identify their effort as an opinion piece, but
not for lack of data analysis. The New York pair noted the strong influence
exerted on the results of Wilcove et al. by the inclusion of Hawaiian endemics
and questioned the degree to which alien species had been blamed for their
predicaments. They subdivided alien species contributions into functional types
(for example, herbivory by livestock, competition from plants, alien pathogens,
and parasites) and de-aggregated effects on plants and animals. Based further
on information from the IUCN Red List, Gurevitch and Padilla concluded that
the assumed importance of the invaders in causing widespread extinctions is to
date unproven, and is based upon limited observation and inference. Evidence
supporting a general and primary role for invasive aliens in extinctions remains
limited. They went on to caution that [w]e must be as specific and as clear
as possible about the nature of threats to species at risk The generalization
that alien species are playing a widespread role in extinctions is, to date, too
unspecific to be either accurate or useful. And, unlike Wilcove et al., they
admitted more work was needed to understand the relative impacts of alien
species in different systems.80
Their cautionary assertions attracted a vigorous rejoinder in the form of a letter
from two Spanish ichthyologists, published in early 2005. Miguel Clavero and
Emili Garca-Berthou took issue with Gurevitch and Padillas methods, accepting
anecdotal inferences they claimed the Stony Brook pair had overlooked. Tellingly,
though, the Spaniards concluded that [a]lthough extinction is often the end
result of invasions, there are other ecological and evolutionary impacts of biotic
79 Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 50.
80 Jessica Gurevitch and Dianna K. Padilla, Are invasive species a major cause of extinctions?, Trends in
Ecology & Evolution 19 (2004): 47074.
31
homogenization that are less understood[citing two references] thus prevention

and the precautionary principle are of particular relevance to invasive species.81
They did little more than to demarcate the boundary of acceptable thinking.
Later in 2005, Wilcove joined a colleague from Beijing to again quantify threats,
this time to 437 species of Chinese vertebrates, and to compare them with the
1998 conclusions of Wilcove et al. regarding imperiled American species.
Publishing again in BioScience, they relied primarily on the China Red Data
Book of Endangered Animals. Again, they essentially cautioned readers against
relying on the results. They excluded potential or hypothetical threats and
did not try to distinguish between ongoing and historical threats because such
information is often lacking, and the distinction itself is problematic in the case
of habitat destruction. They went on to detail five important assumptions
attached to these data:
First, although the Red Data Book and other sources used in this study represent
an impressive compilation of information on threats to species, we do not
know the extent towhich they may be biased for or against particular threats.
Inother words, some of the many contributors to the Red DataBook may have
focussed on particular threats to the exclusion of others. The same is true for
the data underlying Wilcove and colleagues (1998) analysis of threats to US
vertebrates.Thus, our comparisons are based on the assumption that allthreats
had equal probabilities of being detected and recorded for each species and
country. Second, in most cases there is little actual experimental evidence
connecting a particularthreat to a particular species. The determination that a
givenhuman activity is now or has been a threat to a species is typicallythe result
of someones professional judgment, ratherthan the result of a formal experiment.
We assume that documented threats are accurate, and that any biases in the
dataare consistent across all vertebrate classes and between the twocountries.
Third, because the faunas of both countries are essentiallyallopatric, we assume
that the threats to biodiversityin each nation are independent, notwithstanding
obviouslinkages through international commerce. Fourth, althoughindividual
species in each country may be listed under multiple threats (a reflection
of the reality that many species are threatened by more than one factor), we
considered the data independent because any species theoretically could fall
intoany of the individual categories or combination of categories.(It is possible,
however, that imperiled species with broader ranges encounter more threats
and therefore contribute disproportionatelyto our data.) Fifth, we assumed no
interactionbetween threats, although in reality there probably are(e. g., between
habitat destruction and the spread of alienspecies).82
81 Miguel Clavero and Emili Garca-Berthou, Invasive species are a leading cause of animal extinctions,
Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20 (2005): 110.
82 Li Yiming and David S. Wilcove, Threats to vertebrate species in China and the United States, BioScience
55 (2005): 14753.
32
Having thus (again) disclaimed any expectation of producing accurate or precise

results, they proceeded with their analysis. This time alien species ranked
a distant fourth of five putative threats, affecting only three per cent of the
taxa reviewed. They called the contrast between the American and Chinese
situations striking in relationship to two types of threats, one of which (alien
species) was harder to explain. After paying lip-service to the possibility that
there might be actual differences (but ignoring the possibility that the American
results might have been skewed), they offered their preferred explanation:
itmay simply be an artifact of neglect: Chinese ecologists have not focussed on
alien species as a threat to biodiversity until relatively recently. They followed
that observation with supporting citations and comments that apparently had
not been eligible for evaluating their data, pre-analysis. And evidently the
disparity appeared too significant to explain away, leading them to conclude
there were significant differences between the situations in the two countries.83
To his credit, Wilcove (unlike Wilson) did not attempt to universalise his
geographically constrained conclusions, but the awkward shifting of blame for
differing results on a perceived navet among Chinese scientists raised a spectre
of Western academic condescension that even his Chinese colleagues placement
as lead author could not diminish.
A little less than two years later another quantification of threats was
undertaken, this time in Canada, by five Canadians whose results (published yet
again in BioScience) diverged substantially from those of Quantifying Threats.
LikeGurevitch and Padilla (but independently, it seems), they noted the extent
to which the results of Wilcove et al. were influenced by the heavy representation
of Hawaiian endemics. The Canadian team found introduced species to be the
least common broadscale threat in Canada. They also criticised Wilcove et al.
for failing to consider threats from native species interactions and natural
disasters, each of which they found to be more significant than introduced
species.84
Me, too!: Generations three and following

In the interest of saving time, graduate science students with heavy reading loads
are commonly encouraged to skip the introductions (and even the conclusions) of
peer-reviewed papers. As one online pundit explained: its all regurgitation and
conjecture.85 However, introductions have other functions. The ways authors
83 Yiming and Wilcove, Threats to vertebrate species.
84 Oscar Venter, Nathalie N. Brodeur, Leah Nemiroff, Brenna Belland, Ivan J. Dolinsek, and James W. A.
Grant, Threats to endangered species in Canada, Bioscience56 (2006): 90310.
85 Isaiah Hankel, 130 Things Surviving Graduate School Taught Me About Business Success (2014),
www.isaiahhankel.com/graduate-school, accessed 5 June 2014.
33
introduce papers helps situate them in disciplinary contexts. It establishes their

bona fides. In case the name of the field leaves room for doubt, the introductions
of invasion biology papers are places for authors to bemoan the existence of their
objects of study, which are to be resisted, not deemed objectively interesting.
The Wilson/Wilcove declaration, invasive exotic species are the second greatest
threat to biodiversity, justifies studying any particular case because it implies
the result will be used to resist an invasion. By citing it, authors laconically
declare themselves fellows of the alien deprecation league. Like the alien/native
dichotomy itself, the second greatest threat rapidly attained the status of a
truism, a fact everyone (who was anyone) simply understood to be the case.
As such, the nearly 1,200 citations recorded by the Web of Science (June 2014)
for Quantifying Threats represent an indeterminate percentage of the number
of times some form of the statement has appeared in peer-reviewed literature
since 1998. It appears with considerably less frequency in the two specialist
journals (Biological Invasions and Diversity and Distributions, where it might
be considered somewhat redundant to make such declarations) than in general
ecology- and conservation-related titles.
In his 2009 Oxford University Press book Invasion Biology, Macalester College
ecologist Mark Davis devoted about two pages to critiquing Quantifying
Threats and its credulous reception. Citing Gurevitch and Padillas concerns
and the Canadian results of Venter et al., Davis framed the effort of Wilcove et
al. as a case of too much, too soon, and too good to be true, beginning: In any
discipline, it is important that preliminary ideas or tentative conclusions made
on the basis of one or a few studies do not acquire a life of their own, eventually
assuming a level of validity and generality that is unjustified on the basis of
the actual data.86 How often this has actually happened in other disciplines
is a moot point Davis did not pursue. His analysis, too, reproduced the full
disclaimer from Quantifying Threats and drew a strong conclusion: [i]t is
difficult to believe that all those who have cited this article actually have read it.
Lax citation practices are a well-known rattling skeleton in academes closet.
Categorising and quantifying their occurrence to determine whether ecologists,
conservation biologists, or invasion biologists are any more predisposed to
citing unread sources based on their reputed content than practitioners in any
other discipline would be a monumental undertaking. But the flexibility with
which the claim of Wilcove et al. has been deployed is impressive. There are so
many extant permutations that it is impractical, even electronically, to inventory
them. Many paraphrasers fail to acknowledge that the finding was limited to
the United States. Few ever note that it was strongly skewed by the inclusion
86 Davis, Invasion Biology, 18183.

34
of Hawaiian cases, and virtually none that it was grounded in anecdotal data.
They have often generalised it vaguely or globally (as might be suggested by
the articles teaser), but even then the full title and its implications usually
appeared among their references. Some attached a geographical or taxonomic
scope relevant to their own work.
I reviewed the first 25 relevant results of a 17 June 2014 Google Scholar search
for peer-reviewed papers published in 2014 that cited Quantifying Threats
regarding the effects of introduced species to determine how current authors
were using and contextualising the second greatest threat statement. Firstly,
its ubiquity in the literature was confirmed by the fact that these 25 appeared
in 23 different journals and one MSc thesis, and were produced by authors
from at least 14 countries. Twenty-three listed it in their introductions among
litanies of putatively established facts. Only two accurately confined the scope
of Quantifying Threats to the United States. Six explicitly expanded it to a
global or worldwide finding. Twelve paraphrased it in such vague terms as to
represent it as a universal truism. Five suggested it specifically applied to their
own areas of interest: agricultural landscapes, plants, local biodiversity,
coastal ecosystems, and indigenous species. The last, in full: Exotic species
are considered the second most insidious cause of biodiversity loss and
population decline of indigenous species.87
Experts, ecologists, environmentalists

During a 2004 television interview, University of California linguist George
Lakoff was commenting on the rhetoric of the ongoing US Presidential campaign.
He observed that one party was actively dismissing the science of environmental
issues and appealing instead to common sense. In the process, Lakoff conflated
three identities: [w]ho are the experts? Theyre ecologists, environmentalists
[emphasis added].88 Lakoffs assertion seemed common-sensical in its own way,
perhaps because the distinction between being an environmentalist and being
an ecologist is vague, even to those who claim such identities.
87 Kamal J. K. Gandhi, Annemarie Smith, Diane M. Hartzler, and Daniel A. Herms, Indirect Effects of
Emerald Ash Borer-Induced Ash Mortality and Canopy Gap Formation on Epigaeic Beetles, Environmental
Entomology 43 (2014): 54655.
88 David Brancaccio and George Lakoff, Talking About Talk, NOW With Bill Moyers (New York, Thirteen/
WNET for PBS, first broadcast 23 July 2004). An active environmentalist himself, George Lakoff consults for
the Sierra Club and dozens of environmental organizations; cf. Katy Butler, Winning Words, Sierra (July
August 2004) www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200407/words.asp.
35
A 1976 college biology textbook stated: most ecologists are environmentalists,

because of the nature of their training and interests. The reverse is not necessarily
true, however; not all environmentalists are ecologists.89 Twenty years later,
another biologist concluded, many undergraduates enrol for introductory
ecology classes in the expectation that ecology will offer enlightenment as well
as factual knowledgean enlightenment with moral and spiritual dimensions,
and wondered, how should we cope with the divergence between the
academics definition of ecology as a branch of disinterested science, and the
general publics understanding of ecology as a life philosophy or quasi-religion
that connect[s] interpretations of how ecosystems function to moral imperatives
and spiritual significance?90
These are indicative, not isolated comments. Since the founding of the first
ecological societies a century ago, ecologists have concerned themselves with
nature conservation. The Ecological Society of Americas 1926 Naturalists Guide
to the Americas was compiled by its Committee for the Preservation of Natural
Conditions because, it claimed, the societys membership includes a larger
proportion of persons interested in the preservation of natural conditions for
research in pure science and for educational work than any other of our national
scientific societies.91 Despite that declaration of objective purpose, the body of
the book opened with an outline of The Value of Natural Areas to Literature and
Art, followed by The Value of Natural Preserves to the Landscape Architect.
Spiritual matters are addressed obliquely in a quotation from a Harvard
University emeritus president: Something more than economic remedies must
be found for the great evils which beset modern society, and particularly for the
diseases, physical and moral, which are caused by congestion of population.92
It seems ecologists have been concerned about threats of one kind or another
since ecology began, and at least some have taken their ecological knowledge to
authorise their opinions.
Many arguments have been deployed to justify seeing the ecological sciences
as sources of deeper truths. Other arguments are devoted to exposing expert
eco-piety as nave disregard of Realpolitik or fraudulent self-serving. All those
can hardly be summarised here. Looking at the advent of the second greatest
threat, the most charitable possible conclusion is that Edward O. Wilson and
(subsequently) David Wilcove et al. sincerely believed what they wrote and
submitted it for publication assuming there was no time to be lost in making
89 William C. Schefler, Biology: Principles and Issues (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1976), 266.
90 Mark Westoby, What Does Ecology Mean? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12 (1997): 166.
91 Victor E. Shelford, Chairmans Preface, in Naturalists Guide to the Americas (Baltimore, MD: Williams
& Wilkins, 1926), vvii.
92 Charles W. Eliot, quoted by Stanley White, The Value of Natural Preserves to the Landscape Architect,
in Naturalists Guide to the Americas, ed. Shelford, 89.
36
such vital information available. They certainly could have done that in ways
that more clearly and appropriately emphasised the contingency of their source
materials and their methods. However, there seems to be little reason to doubt
that Wilson was serving his own purposes as much as any other. Perhaps he tooreadily accepted his own opinion as inevitably consonant with objective reality.
His justification for ignoring not only norms of scientific practice but also the
simplest rules of logic are hard to fathom. He is by any measure a celebrity,
which may be the key point. The world occupied by celebrity scientists has a
peculiar characteristic. Having achieved (or assumed) a state of peerlessness, a
celebrity scientist is no longer subject to peer review. But having abandoned
peer review, he is no longer speaking as a scientist.
Quantifying Threats (reduced to its primary, oft-repeated, and strangely
elastic central claim) became a celebrity itself, identified by BioScience as its
most-cited article (as of 1 August 2014).93 In this light, Mark Davis assessment
that few of those who cite the paper can actually have read it takes on gloomy
new significance. Nevertheless, its reification by repeated reference, abetted by
Wilsons endorsement, quickly (and persistently) made citing it a catechistic
imperative for invasion biologists, whether supplicant tyros or established true
believers. Meanwhile its authors, especially the four routinely subsumed under
the shorthand et al., did not share in their brainchilds celebrity.94 In 2008, lead
author Wilcove published a second book, No way home: the decline of the worlds
great animal migrations, perhaps an ironic coda to his disparagement of the new
class of great migrations as the second greatest threat to biodiversity.95
In 2011, two more Canadian authors surveyed reviewers of the journal Biological
Invasions to obtain a better sense of how invasion biologists evaluate several
foundational issues. One of those issues was the credibility of the second
greatest threat. They found that only 27.3 per cent of respondents [115 of 422]
ranked invasive species as the first or second greatest threat to biodiversity.
The corresponding author of that paper, Brendon Larson, has been a leading
observer and sometime critic of invasion biology for the past decade, publishing
numerous thoughtful articles on the fields affinity with hyperbolic advocacy
and reliance on militaristic constitutive metaphors. His willingness to discuss
ranking threats to biodiversity suggests he still operates largely within the
framing pioneered by Wilson in 1992. Despite Wilsons foundational role in
93 Anonymous, Most-Cited Articles, BioScience, bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/reports/most-cited,

accessed 3 September 2014.
94 As of the time of writing, David S. Rothstein is an attorney for the US Fish and Wildlife Service; Jason
Dubow is Director of Environmental Planning for the State of Maryland; Ali Phillips could not be positively
identified online; Elizabeth Losos is President and CEO of the Organization for Tropical Studies.
95 (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2008).
37
setting the terms of the issues Larson and his colleague were examining, they
never mentioned him. That as much as anything suggests Wilsons framing has
succeeded to paradigmatic status.
Over the years I have talked to many life scientists who found Quantifying
Threats wanting in some respects, but who chose not to openly challenge
it. I did not collect their stories and can offer only general impressions. Some
suggested no one really took the paper seriously, so it did not require serious
attention from serious minds engaged in serious science. That seems either
nave or disingenuous. A few felt that openly criticising Quantifying Threats
could jeopardise their careers or standing in conservation biology circles.
Hesitancy and rationalisation may be the rule, but there are exceptions; two
have already been noted (Davis; Gurevitch and Padilla). Invasion biologys
relentless proselytising in the news and popular media spawned responses
there as well. Two in particular are relevant here: science writer Emma Marris
personal manifesto, Rambuctious Garden: saving nature in a post-wild world,
and British plant ecologist Ken Thompsons wide-ranging rebuttal of invasion
biologys more hyperbolic (perhaps egregious) assertions, Where do Camels
Belong?: the story and science of invasive species. Marris merely acknowledged
the existence of Quantifying Threats and its famous finding.96 She went on
to say, Biodiversity may be the most problematic goal precisely because it
embraces so much: several levels of biological organization, from genes to whole
landscapes. Nevertheless, it may come closest to capturing what people like
about nature.97 Marris kept one foot inside the Wilsonian paradigm, even if only
for lack of a clear alternative. Thompson took another tack, calling the second
greatest threat a straightforward lie.98 But he also invoked biodiversity with
less hesitation than Marris. This brings us back to the problem of deciding who
(ifanyone) the liars were and whether their lies (if any) were straightforward.
Ecology is hardly monolithic, and it has been noted that ways in which ecological
scientists interrelate their own beliefs about environmental advocacy, values, and
scientific integrity is an extremely complex issue.99 Operating in a consistent,
principled manner at the intersection of ecology and environmental advocacy
(or its precursors) has never been simple. During the 1970s early proponents of
science studies were already observing its hazards. Sociologist Dorothy Nelkin
tracked American ecologists excitement at suddenly feeling relevant as popular
environmentalism coalesced, to being overwhelmed by relevance, to being
96 Emma Marris, Rambunctious Garden (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2011), 103.
97 Marris, Rambunctious Garden, 163.
98 Thompson, Where do Camels Belong?, 4748.
99 Derek S. Reiners, William A. Reiners, and Jeffrey A. Lockwood, The relationship between environmental
advocacy, values, and science: a survey of ecological scientists attitudes, Ecological Applications 23
(2013):122642.
38
disillusioned by actual policy outcomes and the (commercial) professionalisation

and exploitation of a once primarily academic discipline, all in the space of a
single decade. Nelkin noted, the tendency to adjust ones research to useful
directions may follow less from intellectual conviction than from professional
opportunity. She concluded with still relevant questions: [a]s scientists become
increasingly involved in public policy problems, does this inevitably encourage
greater outside direction of scientific work? And if scientists avoid such
involvement, can they reduce interference [in] the working of their disciplines?
The ecologists dilemma suggests that outside relationships and controls will
develop willy-nilly whenever the work of scientists is perceived to be relevant
to public problems.100 A decade later, concerning the relationship of science to
press coverage, she wrote, Often errors derive less from inaccurate reproduction
of details than from the inevitable distortions that occur in translating complex
technical terms into lay English.101 She meant errors propagated by reporters,
perhaps never anticipating the trajectory of biodiversity, an object of reverent
qualitative advocacy that was to be insinuated into scientific discourse as if it
were actually an object of quantitative analysis.
In a posthumously published essay, Nelkin did have something salient to say
about Wilson, albeit in the context of Wilsons 1989 book, Consilience, and it
was not exactly complimentary:
Harvard University entomologist Edward O. Wilson (1989), a founder and
advocate of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, has explicitly equated
science and religion: Perhaps science is a continuation on new and better tested
ground to attain the same end [as religion]. If so, then, in that sense science
is religion liberated and writ large ... Science, he claims, offers the boldest
metaphysics of the age ... there is a general explanation of the human condition
proceeding from the deep history of genetic evolution. Without directly relying
on the notion of a God, he and other evolutionary psychologists use a language
replete with theological metaphors that convey concepts of immortality and
essentialism. And they invest their theories with ethical implications and moral
obligations.102
Nelkin went on to conclude:

The God talk, the cosmic claims, the organizations for dialogue and reconciliation
are all ways to minimize the distance between science and religion, to answer
100 Dorothy Nelkin, Scientists and Professional Responsibility: The Experience of American Ecologists,
Social Studies of Science 7 (1977): 7595.
101 Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the press covers science and technology (New York: W. H. Freeman,
1987), 126.
102 Dorothy Nelkin, God Talk: Confusion between Science and Religion, Science, Technology & Human
Values 29: 2 (2004): 13952; 148.
39
the accusations of critics, and to compete for credibility in the public domain.
By drawing on powerful images of Christianity, scientists are seeking to attract
convertsto convince the public and many skeptics of the power of their ideas.103
Whether or not she intended God Talk to appear posthumously, it was the
kind of dangerous confrontational piece many others have reserved for their
final words on fraught topics. Nelkin saw Wilsons exertions as an attempt to
become very important indeed by moving beyond science to prophecy, where
neither methods nor peers constrained him.
His appropriation of St. Johns apocalyptic four horsemen reveals the clarity of
Nelkins insight. The second greatest threat was not ademonstrable factof the
world awaiting scientific discovery. It was the sum of specific fears selected,
calculated, cultivated and wholesaled by Edward O. Wilsonin a work published
byHarvard University Press, retailed by David Wilcoveet al.inBioScience, then
virally distributed and adopted as the password of invasion biologythrough
misreading and misleading citation. Biodiversity was conceived as a threatened
quality. Opinion polls of true believers regarding those threats, compiled by
their prophets, cast light on some of conservation biologys apocalyptic concerns.
They have catechistical, boundary-marking applications for practitioners of
that crisis discipline and offer araison dtreverging on gnosis for invasion
biologists. As points of departure for ecological science, they offer neither
destination nor means of conveyance. If it is valuable (or indeed, possible) to
truly quantify threats to biodiversity, clearer objectives and more principled
methods are needed.
103 Nelkin, God Talk: 150.

40
ENVIRONMENTAL DISTURBANCE
TRIGGERING INFESTATIONS OF
GORSE, RABBITS, AND THISTLES
INSOUTHERN NEW ZEALAND:
1850TO 1980
PETER HOLLAND1 AND GUIL FIGGINS2
Department of Geography
University of Otago
PO Box 56, Dunedin
Abstract
In the first four decades of organised European settlement in southern New Zealand,
gorse was planted in straight lines on farms and stations for hedges and shelter,
rabbits were released at localities around the coast and in the interior for recreation
and the pot, and thistle seeds were inadvertently carried to properties as pollutants in
sacks of imported grass seed and the fleeces of sheep. Within a decade of becoming
established on a property, each became a nuisance. Entries in farm and station letter
books and diaries, ledgers and cash books, the minute books of local and national
government agencies, and reports to parliament enabled us to characterise the
dispersal routes and refuges of rabbits in the former tussock grass and low shrub
country of southern New Zealand, and to investigate the nature, cost and effectiveness
of control measures employed by land holders, local bodies and the state. We suggest
that ecological theory, with its emphasis on interactions and interconnections between
living things and their environments, can deepen our understanding of the spread,
establishment, and dominance of these three introduced organisms after episodes of
environmental disturbance, natural as well as artificial, have created opportunities for
them to thrive.
Keywords: environmental disturbance, gorse, rabbits, thistles, ecological

opportunities, habitats of disturbance, refuge areas, pest control and eradication,
farms as ecological systems, ecological succession.
1 Corresponding author: Peter Holland: pgh@geography.otago.ac.nz.

2 Peter Holland is Emeritus Professor in Geography at the University of Otago. Guil Figgins recently
graduated PhD in Geography at the University of Otago.
41
Introduction
Through their efforts to burn or uproot native plants, drain wetlands and plough
the topsoil, did European settlers in southern New Zealand inadvertently trigger
ecological processes that would facilitate the spontaneous spread, establishment,
and dominance of introduced species such as gorse, thistles, and rabbits? Entries
in European settlers diaries and letter books, local and national government
reports, and the records of land companies suggest that this was the case, and
we have evaluated the evidence in the light of ecological theory.
In southern New Zealand, extensive tussock grass and low shrublands with
stands of trees in gullies and moist ground (hereafter termed the open country)
(Map 1), were known to the indigenous Mori (tangata whenua or iwi), who had
fostered the development and persistence of this vegetation type by burning.
The open country was dotted with places where such valued resources as plant
and animal foods, scents and dyes were collected, criss-crossed by paths, and
filled with meaning for iwi, who passed on their knowledge of it to succeeding
generations.3 As organised European settlement got under way, surveyors
mapped what they believed would be helpful to settlers: notably, coastlines,
rivers and streams, water bodies and wetlands, well-used tracks, topographical
features, and areas of wooded land.4 With the progression of European
settlement, the communal landscapes of iwi were erased and in their place
geometrical mosaics of large and small properties, each occupied by a family and
regulated by the laws of the day, were established. Surveyors laid out grids of
roads and section boundaries, imposed straight lines and obtuse angles on the
landscape, delimited reserves for roads and tracks, and stored the details in land
registers5 that recorded an individuals right to occupy a property. In essence
these early surveys were forward-looking, and an expression of societys vision
for the new land as well as how it would be occupied. Aside from Mori place
names current in the 1840s and 50s, there were few mementoes on early maps of
the prior landscape, iwi or their images of the land and, as George Griffiths has
shown, several recorded Mori place names were spurious.6
3 M. J. Stevens, Ngi Tahu and the nature of Mori modernity, in Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, Making
a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 293309.
4 Eric Pawson and Peter Holland, Lowland Canterbury landscapes in the making, New Zealand Geographer
61 (2005): 16775.
5 G. Byrnes, Surveying spaces: constructing the colonial landscape, in B. Dalley and B. Labrum,
Fragments. New Zealand Social and Cultural History (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2000), 5475; G.
Byrnes, Boundary Markers: Land Surveying and the Colonisation of New Zealand (Wellington: Bridget Williams
Books, 2001).
6 G. J. Griffiths, The Spurious Mori Place Names of Southern New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago Heritage
Books,2002).
42
Environmental Disturbance Triggering Infestations of Gorse, Rabbits, and Thistles inSouthern New Zealand
Map 1: The open country of southern New Zealand, showing the principal
rivers, lakes, place names, and pioneer properties mentioned in the text.
Source: Redrawn from vegetation maps in I. Wards (ed.), New Zealand Atlas (Wellington, Government
Printer, 1976).
43
Compared with forested areas in the North Island, the open country of southern
New Zealand was readily transformed into productive farms and sheep stations.
Rural settlers based the economies of their properties on fine wool produced for
the British market, and subsequent decisions about land use and landscape fell
into place like checkers on a board. Several were to have significant environmental
consequences for southern New Zealand, but few European settlers were alert to
the ill effects in prospect. In his old age, Alexander Beange ruefully recalled his
first year at Mimihau, five kilometres east of Wyndham in the Mataura valley,
Southland, where he had pioneered a 500-acre block: The whole area was
covered with tussock, and there was not a gorse bush or a rabbit to be seen ...
in twelve years the settlers gradually brought the land under cultivation.7 Until
the 1860s, as Beange and other European settlers discovered, the open country of
southern New Zealand was the kingdom of grass, dominated by perennial native
grasses and broad-leafed herbs, with occasional trees, shrubs, and bracken fern
(Pteridium esculentum) in damp ground. Across the area, settlers found logs and
tree stumps in moist places, remnants of fire several centuries before, which they
used for pit props as well as for fuel, fence-posts and construction.8
Through newspapers and magazines, settlers had access to practical advice as
well as commercial sources of the materials and tools they needed to transform
their lowland properties into productive pastures and crop-land. The first
generation believed that environmental transformation would catalyse economic
improvement and result in more palatable herbage for sheep and cattle, fewer
places where livestock would come to harm, and more efficient management.
Inthis regard, we follow James Beattie and John Stenhouse in asking if the first
generation of European settlers also recognised their parallel roles of stewards
and transformers of the environment, and if these ideals were put into practice.9
Within a few years of settlement, the boundaries of a farm or lowland station
had been wholly or partly delineated with hedges and fences to keep the
familys livestock in and their neighbours animals out. A property was split
into blocks for the homestead and out-buildings, fields for crops, paddocks for
sown pasture, and larger areas for extensive grazing, each bounded by hedges
or fences. Land holders gave informal names to individual fields and paddocks
to facilitate management, found that groves of cabbage trees (Cordyline australis)
indicated damp ground, and learned to avoid tracts of soil too thin or stony
to cultivate. The surveyor, Frederick Tuckett, as well as other early residents
7
Southland Times, 26 January 1949.
8 M. S. McGlone and J. M. Wilmshurst, Dating initial Maori environmental impact in New Zealand,
Quaternary International 59 (1999): 516; B. P. J. Molloy, C. J. Burrows, J. E. Cox, J. A. Johnston, and P. Wardle,
Distribution of sub-fossil forest remains, eastern South Island, New Zealand, New Zealand Journal of Botany
1 (1963): 6877.
9 James Beattie andJohn Stenhouse, Empire, Environment and Religion: God and Nature in nineteenthcentury New Zealand, Environment and History 13 (2007): 41346.
44
wrote informative accounts for the guidance of intending settlers10 about the
environmental diversity of southern New Zealand but, as Vaughan Wood
has shown, not all early settlers were deluded by the biometric fallacy that
associated substantial biomass and rapid crop growth in newly cleared land as
evidence for a nutrient-rich soil suited to agriculture in the long term.11
Gorse, rabbits, and thistles reached New Zealand from south-eastern Australia
and the British Isles in the mid-nineteenth century. These three species have
intertwined histories and exemplify the problems caused by many other
introduced plant and animal species that became naturalised in New Zealand.
This article is primarily concerned with the experiences of the first three
generations of European settlers in the lowlands of southern New Zealand.
Atfirst, they held out high hopes for the first two species, but all three became
serious nuisances. We suggest that the history, impact, and control of pest
animals and noxious weeds are aspects of an ecological system that are usefully
investigated holistically. We also show how ecological factors and forces relating
to these undesirable newcomers were modulated by the social structures,
environmental perceptions, and beliefs of settler society.
European settlers undertook widespread landscape change, normally with
backing from private capital, and we ask (a) if individual human agency,
being the actions of autonomous individuals who believe that change is
possible,12 predominated in the early years of organised settlement, and (b) if
collective human agency, which is expressed in the cultural, infrastructural
and communications resources that enable collective action,13 became
necessarylater.
The agency of the non-human world was central to the difficulties faced by land
holders in this period. The world of the rural settler was co-constituted by a
wide range of human and non-human actors working upon each other to create
networks and relationships that would shape a new and varied set of cultural
and physical landscapes. On a settlers property, large flocks of sheep (Photo1)
and small herds of cattle were raised for meat and fibre, while bullocks and
10 Peter Holland, Kevin OConnor, and Alexander Wearing, Remaking the grasslands of the open country,
in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Melbourne: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 6983 & 302304.
11 Vaughan Wood, Appraising soil fertility in early colonial New Zealand: the biometric fallacy and
beyond, Environment and History 9 (2003): 393405.
12 D. J. Davidson, The applicability of the concept of resilience to social systems: some sources of optimism
and nagging doubts, Society and Natural Resources 23 (2010): 113549.
13 H. Lorimer, HumanNon-human, in P. Cloke, P. Crang, and M. Goodwin, Introducing Human Geographies
(London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 3751; S. Whatmore, Dissecting the autonomous self: hybrid cartographies
for a relationship ethics, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (1977): 3753; R. Yarwood and
N. Evans, Taking stock of farm animals and rurality, in C. Philo and C. Wilbert, Animal Geographies of
HumanAnimal Relations (London: Routledge, 2000), 98114.
45
horses were kept for transport and power, and dogs were valued as working
animals. Over time, different relationships developed between the human
and the non-human worlds through the medium of introduced plants and
animals, and the new land was perceived by settlers as a blank canvas on which
newcomerspeople, plants and animalswould soon dominate. Relationships
and processes that linked the human and non-human worlds were modified by
social, economic, ecological, and technological changes, and the economy of a
farm or station was both sustained and constrained by introduced plants and
animals. This dynamic fostered new relationships between people and nature,
as land holders learned to deal with environmental problems thrown up by
the biophysical processes of native and introduced species, and as plants and
animals exploited the ecological opportunities created by settlers.14
Photo 1: Sheep recently mustered from the hill country and held in the
yards waiting to be shorn, Teviot Station, Central Otago, Otago Witness,
10 February 1904, 38.
Source: Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, c/nE5259/20A.
14 O. Jones, Non-human rural studies, in P. Cloke, T. Marsden and P. Mooney, Handbook of Rural Studies
(London: Sage, 2006), 185202; O. Jones and P. Cloke, Non-human agencies: trees in place and time, in
C. Knappett and L. Malafouris, Material Agency: Towards a Non-anthropocentric Approach (New York:
Springer, 2008), 7996.
46
An element of ecological theory, the succession model as applied by the

French-Canadian plant ecologist, Pierre Dansereau, underpinned our approach
and methods.15 The core notions of plant succession are rooted in research
undertaken in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, particularly the studies of Henry Cowles on sand dunes flanking Lake
Michigan, the proposals of H. C. Gleason a decade later about the end-point
of a succession, and the investigations of Frederick Clements in the Oklahoma
dustbowl.16 Succession theory postulates an orderly sequence of steps in the
establishment of mature vegetation cover on a newly exposed area of bare rock
or mineral sediment. Initially, fast-growing and short-lived plants with seeds
that germinate in full sun on bare ground, low biomass, high productivity, and
broad niches will predominate.17 This pioneer system allows larger, longer-lived
and slower-growing plants to become established, and progressively gives way
to structurally complex systems with smaller and more specialised niches as
well as greater biodiversity. Since the 1980s, after several decades of probing
debate, successional studies have reappeared in the ecological literature.18
Dansereau knew about the findings of research into the secondary successions19
that develop after forest clearance, landslide, erosion, cultivation, or fire,
including old field systems triggered by farm abandonment.20 He viewed a
productive farm as a managed ecological system occupying ground that had
been wholly or partly bared by cultivation before being sown with commercial
varieties of herbaceous and woody plants to ensure food for people and grazing
for domesticated animals. Among his proposals was that an agro-system is
home to short-lived plant and animal species selected for their high fecundity,
15 The French-Canadian plant biogeographer, ecologist, and environmentalist Pierre Dansereau was born
in 1911 and received his initial university education in agricultural science. He became known in Canada
and abroad for his research into the structure, composition, and dynamics of forest vegetation, which he
taught in several North American universities. In 1972, after a decade as assistant director of the New York
Botanical Garden, he returned to Montreal where he undertook and directed research in the burgeoning field
of environmental studies from a base at the Universit du Qubec Montral. In later life, his prime concern
was to show how ecological principles apply to the human environment, and a corner-stone of his approach
was that a farm is a special type of ecological system. In 1988, Peter Holland attended a presentation in
Montreal by Professor Dansereau about relations between agro-systems and ecology. The latter died in 2011,
a few days short of his 100th birthday.
16 F. E. Clements, Plant Succession and Indicators (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1928); H. C. Cowles,
Theecological relations of the vegetation of the sand dunes of Lake Michigan, Botanical Gazette (1899); H. C.
Gleason, The causes of vegetation cycles, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 1 (1911): 320.
D. Worster, Natures Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1994) is the classic reference work on the role of ecological thinking in environmental history.
17 C. Gibson and V. Brown, Plant succession: theory and applications, Progress in Physical Geography 9
(1985): 47393.
18 J. P. Sullivan, P. Williams and S. Timmins, Secondary forest succession differs through naturalised gorse
and native kanuka near Wellington and Nelson, New Zealand Journal of Ecology 31 (2007): 2238.
19 F. B. Golley, Ecological Succession (Stroudsburg, PA: Halstead Press, 1977).
20 F. A. Bazzaz, Succession in abandoned fields in the Shawnee Hills, Southern Illinois, Ecology 49 (1968):
92436.
47
palatability, and rapid growth, all of them demanding of water, nutrients, and
other environmental resources. To Dansereau, the managed ecological systems
of a farm or station are analogous to the early stages of a secondary succession,
except that human agency has populated them with a small number of specially
selected species, controlled irruptions of weedy plants and pest animals, limited
predation, and supplemented local environmental resources.
We suggest that the notions of environmental and social resilience21 are also
informative: the former is a measure of the capacity of a mature ecosystem
to recover to something approaching its prior state after damage wrought by
animate and inanimate forces, while the latter reflects the capacity and ability
of individuals to survive and make progress after an economic or environmental
set-back. We argue that these qualities, in combination with the notions of
human and non-human agency and the enlistment of ecological thinking, open
a window onto the problems experienced by early farm and station holders with
gorse, rabbits, and thistles during and after episodes of gross environmental
disturbance in southern New Zealand.
Our primary sources were the records maintained by nineteenth-century
European land holders in southern New Zealand, notably daily records kept
by one or two residents of individual properties over periods of at least five
years. In their diaries and letter books, land holders, and managers recorded
the nature of work done on the property and by whom. Even though these
requirements reduced the number of documentary sources available to us, we
were able to locate seven runs of diaries or letter books that contained details
of land transformation in the principal environments of the South Island open
country: (a) the diaries of James Murison of Puketoi Station near Patearoa in the
Maniototo; (b) the journal of the Phillips family, whose sheep station, The Point,
lay on the north bank of the Rakaia River a short distance from Windwhistle
in mid-Canterbury; (c) the diaries of Joseph Davidson, who farmed a 500-acre
block on the outskirts of Waikaia in northern Southland; (d) the diaries of John
Wither, who held leases on three adjoining blocks of mostly pastoral land across
Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown; (e) the diaries of David Wallace, who farmed
near Clinton in eastern Southland; (f) the diaries and personal papers of James
Preston, who held leases on properties in the Maniototo, the upper Waitaki
Valley, and the Mackenzie Country; and (g) the National Mortgage &Agency
21 F. S. Chapin III, S. R. Carpenter, G. P. Kofinas, C. Folke, N. Abel, W. C. Clark, P. Olssen, D. M. Stafford

Smith, B. Walker, O. R. Young, F. Berkes, R. Briggs, J. M. Grove, R. L. Naylor, E. Pinkerton, W. Steffen, and F.
J. Swanson, Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet, Trends in Ecology
and Evolution 25 (2010): 24149.
48
Company Ltd. (hereafter NMA) archive.22 Other information came from land
company records, local and national government publications, the minute
books of road, rabbit, and pest destruction boards, and newspaper articles.
The mixture of formal and informal, printed, and manuscript sources for a
property enabled us to calculate the time expended in man-days per annum
on (a) burning, draining, ploughing, and other forms of gross environmental
disturbance, (b)clipping hedge plants, chipping volunteer growth, and burning
the trimmings, (c) eradicating rabbits, and (d) chipping or uprooting thistles.
Pioneer farms and stations as ecological

systems
The prime challenge for a settler family was to establish sufficient grazing and
arable land to ensure a satisfactory income, and this called for environmental
transformation by spade and shovel, axe and saw, fire and plough. European
settlers in the open country of southern New Zealand occupied an area that had
been substantially transformed from a wooded landscape with the aid of fire set
several centuries earlier by Polynesian hunters. In the 1840s and 50s the open
country might still have been recovering from environmental disturbance, but
European settlers encountered an apparently natural landscape occupied by a
small number of herbaceous species, tall and short tussock grasses, low shrubs,
and trees in moist ground sheltered from the drying north-west winds of spring
and summer. Sown pastures or crop-land could lift average carrying capacity
from less than one to between five and 10 sheep per acre, and this objective was
achieved by burning and cultivation followed by sowing judicious mixtures
of grass and herbaceous broad-leaf species imported from Australia, Western
Europe, and North America (Photo 2). In the drive to meet their economic
goals, settlers damaged or destroyed indigenous ecosystems that were well
suited to prevailing environmental conditions, and replaced them with shortterm habitats of disturbance created and regularly renewed by land holders.
Oneearly consequence was a reduction in biomass, but another two outcomes
were a shift from tall to short tussock and loss of the palatable fine grasses and
broad-leaf herbs that had occupied sheltered ground between tall tussocks.23
22 Except for The Point Journal, a copy of which is in the Canterbury Museum and Archive, Christchurch,
the key sources are held by the Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago: Joseph
Davidsons diaries (AG-523 and MS-3983); John Withers diaries (89149); David Wallaces diaries (MS-4031);
James Murisons diaries (ARC-0359); James Prestons diaries, personal and financial papers (MS-1271 and MS1272); the National Mortgage & Agency Co. archive (UN-028).
23 Holland, OConnor and Wearing, Remaking the grasslands of the open country.
49
Photo 2: Alexander Dewar with a single-furrow plough drawn by a team

of four draught horses on the New Zealand & Australian Land Companys
Totara Farm Estate, north Otago, c. 191015.
Source: Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, negE1649/41.
Whether partial or substantially complete, environmental transformation created

ecological opportunities for introduced and native early successional species
to become established and thrive, and settlers had to learn how to minimise
any adverse effects. Settlers also modified, and in some places eradicated, prior
environmental features by altering their character, dimensions, and placement,
thereby setting the stage for further spontaneous changes. The outcome was a
dynamic mosaic of old and new ecological subsystems, the fine structures of
which comprised environmentally and ecologically distinctive places, lines, and
surfaces, some of them entirely artificial, others showing few direct or indirect
effects of people, and the remainder intermediate between those two states.
Throughout the south, settlers occasionally incorporated extant features in the
new rural landscape: patches of remnant forest and shrubland in gullies, riparian
vegetation alongside creeks and streams, tracts of tussock, areas of bracken fern
and low shrubs, and large and small areas of wetland. Fields cleared for pasture,
grain, and root crops, and delineated by rights-of-way, fences, hedges, stone
and sod walls, or rows of trees (Photo 3) offered refuge, ecological opportunities,
and pathways through the landscape for introduced as well as native plant and
50
animal species.24 Widespread and repeated environmental disturbance was a

distinguishing feature of the rural landscape. Fields of grain and potatoes were
renewed annually, sown pastures often had to be replaced every three to five
years, and all required persistent management.
Photo 3: Tree-planting in the Maniototo, Otago, c. 1904

Source: Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, E402/3/5.
The immediate benefits of environmental transformation were improved carrying

capacity for sheep and cattle, and a greater income from sales of wool, tallow,
skins, meat, grain, hay, and root crops. In the long term, however, the modes of
environmental transformation practised by settlers gave rise to unanticipated
environmental and economic costs: infestation by and rampant growth of
weedy plants, more pest animals, reduced carrying capacity for livestock,
smaller economic surpluses, loss of plant nutrients, and soil erosion. The pace of
seasonal and inter-annual change in a farm or station system was also more rapid
and of greater amplitude than in the ecological system it replaced.
24 E. Pollard, N. W. Moore and M. D. Hooper, Hedges (London: Collins, 1974) is the classic account of
research into the environment and ecology of hedgerows in the British Isles, and their significance as habitats
and dispersal routes for plants and animals.
51
A century of gorse, rabbits, and thistles

insouthern New Zealand
Gorse seed was commercially available in the second half of the nineteenth
century,25 rabbits were introduced repeatedly after the mid-1840s, and thistle
seeds, like those of many other weeds of agricultural and pastoral land, reached
the Colony and spread as pollutants in sacks of grass seed.26 Thistles thrived in
ploughed ground, quickly became established, and dispersed as their ripe seeds
were carried off by the wind. In the first two decades of organised settlement,
these newcomers did not raise particular issues for land holders,27 and farm and
station diaries, as well as settlers letter books from that period, contain few
references to them. This was soon to change.
Gorse
Gorse had been sown for hedges in the provinces of Taranaki and Nelson in the
1850s, and in 1859, when the Furze Ordinance became law, it was a recognised
nuisance in the former. Two years later, the Nelson Provincial Council passed
a similar ordinance prohibiting the use of gorse for hedges in Nelson city and
requiring land holders to clip existing gorse hedges.28 Despite this, until the
1880s gorse remained the hedge plant of choice in eastern and southern districts
of the South Island where there were limited supplies of native timber for
fence-posts and rails, let alone for lumber and fuel. Supplies of imported gorse
seed were advertised in newspapers and catalogues by merchants in towns and
cities. Within a decade, gorse had become a common weed on land below 700
metres and was spreading into cultivated fields and environmentally disturbed
tussock grass and shrubland, as well as occupying the banks and flood-worked
gravel beds of lowland streams and rivers, from which it spread onto farm-land.
Itsseeds could remain viable in the top soil for two or three decades.
By the 1880s, land holders were discovering that the disadvantages of a gorse
hedge outweighed its benefits, and the South Molyneaux District Road Board
informed a prospective tenant that he was not permitted to plant gorse on the
property.29 The Second Schedule of the Noxious Weeds Act (1900) listed gorse
as a noxious weed, and the Noxious Weeds Act (1908) required Everyoccupier
52
25 Peter Holland, Plants and lowland South Canterbury landscapes, New Zealand Geographer 44 (1988):
5060.
26 Herbert Guthrie-Smith, Tutira: the Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Blackwood,
1953; 1st publ. 1921), 250.
27 A. W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 9001900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).
28 G. M. Thomson, The Naturalisation of Animals and Plants in New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1922).
29 Clutha County Clerk to A. J. Paterson, 12 June 1882, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago AG-253-007/001.
of land on which there are hedges or live fences, consisting of noxious

weeds being sweetbriar [Rosa sp.] or blackberry [Rubus sp.], and also gorse
[Ulexeuropaeus], broom [Cytisus scoparius] or hakea [Hakea sp.] (wherever
the same are declared to be noxious weedsand not forming portion of a hedge
or live fence) shall either clear if in small patches or shall clear the same
at the proper season of the year along the entire length of every boundaryfence or boundary-line, and on each side of every internal fence, water-race,
orwatercourse to the width of at least one-quarter of a chain each year until the
whole is cleared.30 Assiduous land holders trimmed hedges after flowering to
constrain seed production, and grubbed out self-sown broom and gorse.
Rabbits
There have been numerous publications about the initial release, spread, and
establishment of rabbits in New Zealand.31 They include accounts of how land
holders and government agencies later sought to develop and employ a suite of
physical, policy, and legislative tools to control the pest.
In January and August 1858 W. K. Macdonald released European rabbits in the
lower Orari River valley, south Canterbury, as well as on a nearby stretch of
coastal sand dunes. The following year their progeny were sufficiently numerous
for family members to shoot them for sport.32 The Macdonalds were not the first
and would not be the last settlers to do so. G. M. Thomson noted that while
early introductions of rabbits in the eastern and southern South Island either
failed or the animals did not spread, later introductions were more invasive.33
Between the late 1840s and the mid-1870s, rabbits spread from where they had
been released, typically following railway rights of way, road verges, and river
valleys to occupy environmentally disturbed habitats in farm and station:
I think it is quite time something was done to have the rabbits destroyed in the
Ahuriri [River, a tributary of the Waitaki River] on the islands between the ford
and top of our run paddocks [where] they are swarming. They are also thick all
over the Omarama flat ... The rabbits will take to the water when hard pressed.
That is how they came to the mainland.34
30 Noxious Weeds, 1908, No. 133, 440447: www.enzs.auckland.ac.nz/docs/1908/1908C133.pdf.

31 Four notable examples are: J. Druett, Exotic intruders: the introduction of plants and animals into New
Zealand (Auckland: Heinemann, 1983); J. A. Gibb and M. J. Williams, The rabbit in New Zealand, in The
European Rabbit: The History and Biology of a Successful Colonizer, ed. H. V. Thompson and C. M. King (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994), 158204; B. Reddiex and G. Norbury, European rabbit, in The Handbook of
New Zealand Mammals, ed. C. M. King (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005); K. A. Wodzicki, Introduced
Mammals of New Zealand: an Ecological and Economic Survey, Bulletin No. 98 (Wellington: Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research, 1950).
32 W. K. Macdonalds diary, Orari Station, original in private hands.
33 Thomson, The Naturalisation of Animals and Plants, 8587.
34 Managers letter book, Benmore Station, 23 July 1874, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, MS-3766.
53
The leaseholder of a station on the shores of Lake Wakatipu recorded in his

diary that rabbits had recently spread to the property and by January 1875 were
becoming numerous. On 27 February 1877, he reported killing 42 rabbits.35
His neighbour, John Wither, had seen large numbers of feral rabbits in northern
Southland, about 50 kilometres from his home, in September 1877 and found
them on his own property a few months later.36 On 12 January 1878 and again on
11 April, James Preston recorded that visitors to Haldon Station went after [that
is, hunted] rabbits in the [Ahuriri] river bed.37 Three years later, the entire station
was plagued by rabbits. The Scottish manager of Ida Valley Station in Central
Otago wrote to the absentee leaseholder on 2 August 1882: this drought, together
with the rabbits, has made the ground very bare.38 Thefollowing April, he noted
a large increase in the number of rabbits, and a major decline in pasture growth,
on the station, despite good growing conditions for introduced pasture grasses.
Although rabbits preferred sown pastures, they also ate the roots of tussock
grasses, shrubs, and perennial herbs, and gnawed cabbage-tree trunks.39
On22May 1889, W. C. Scrimgeour wrote to the General Manager of the NMA
about rabbits on Lake Ohau Station on the flanks of the Southern Alps:
As yet, the rabbits have not injured the feed, although they have begun to dirty
the ground in places ... [but] when the rabbits increase to such a point as will
affect the autumn conditions of stock (and this is likely in such country) then the
loss of sheep during winter will be phenomenal.40
He believed that this would happen within five years, and expressed concern
lest rabbits spill over from the headwaters of the Waitaki River into the upper
catchment of the Rangitata River. Much the same concern had been expressed
by the writers of a report presented to parliament three years earlier.41
The economic and environmental impacts of rabbits were quickly recognised,42
but how they reached plague densities in the drier country of the central South
Island has been debated for decades. G. M. Thomson believed it unlikely that
the sparsely vegetated landscapes of Central Otago were
35 Diary, Mt. Nicholas Station, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, MS-0672.
36 John Withers diary, Sunnyside Station, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago,
89149.
37 James Prestons diary, Haldon Station, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago,
MS-1271/074.
38 Managers letter book, Ida Valley Station, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago,
MS-0658.
39 Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (hereafter AJHR), I6, 1881.
40 NMA miscellaneous papers, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, shelf 785D,
parcel.
41 Report of the Joint Committee on Rabbit and Sheep Acts, AJHR, I4, 1886.
42 D. Petrie, Some effects of the rabbit pest, New Zealand Journal of Science 1 (1883): 41214.
54
brought about by rabbits alone. Before their advent, the runholders who had
possession of the arid region ... were doing their best to denude the surface of
the ground by overstocking with sheep and frequent burning.43
The first rabbit plague peaked in the 1890s. Leaseholders were responsible for
eradicating rabbits, but the rabbiters employed under contract were suspected
of destroying predators and merely culling the rabbits. Eradication of rabbits
was initially the responsibility of individual land holders and organised at the
local level.44 In the ironic words of one land holder, If you want to breed rabbits,
keep rabbiters.45 Except where successful steps had been taken to eradicate
them, large populations of rabbits persisted on Crown and Mori land, and in
the final two decades of the nineteenth century, iwi (tribes) were suspected of
introducing rabbits to previously unaffected areas as a wild food source.46
The first Rabbit Nuisance Act became law in 1876, and under the Rabbit Nuisance
Act (1881) New Zealand was divided into districts, each with an inspector charged
with the eradication of rabbits. In their annual reports to parliament, inspectors
declared their faith in natural predatorsprimarily introduced cats, ferrets,
stoats, and weaselsas a solution to the rabbit problem, and advocated stringent
protection of the native weka [Galliralus australis] as the best natural enemy to the
rabbit we possess.47 When rabbit skins realised good prices on local and overseas
markets, some land holders restricted rabbit extermination to the winter months
when the skins were most valuable. Rabbiters also protected their livelihood:
The price paid for rabbits is so good that it is a very great inducement [for rabbiters]
to preserve the rabbits throughout the summer when they are of little or no value,
and great difficulty is often experienced in getting thorough poisoning done, all
sorts of schemes being adopted to hoodwink the [rabbit] inspectors.48
A further source of annoyance for government officials was the inducement paid
to land holders by the owners of rabbit canning factories (Photo 4) to cease
laying poison and only trap animals in their seasonal prime.49
44 Under the Rabbit Nuisance Act (1876), properties within a rabbit district were subject to inspection
by government employees with power to levy fines and lay formal charges if the work was unsatisfactory.
This system continued until the formation of the national-level Rabbit Destruction Council under the Rabbit
Nuisance Act (1947) and the Rabbit Act (1956). Rates were levied on land holders in areas that were the
responsibility of a rabbit board or, from 1967, an agricultural pest destruction board. These charges were
to cover the costs of materials and staff wages. This system remained largely in place until 1989, when
agricultural pest destruction boards were brought under the control of regional councils and the Rabbit and
Land Management Programme (RLMP) was inaugurated. The RLMP ran from 1989 to 1995, and its activities
concerned individual properties rather than broad geographical areas. Regional and district councils currently
have oversight of the rabbit nuisance as well as powers of enforcement under the Biosecurity Act (1993).
Responsibility for rabbit eradication, however, was returned to individual land holders.
45 AJHR I-5, 1888, 129.
46 AJHR, I-11, 1889.
47 AJHR, H-18, 1887.
48 AJHR, H-21, 1891.
49 AJHR, H-19, 1892.
55
Photo 4: Employees and the interior of a rabbit canning factory

atAlexandra, Central Otago, 1917.
Source: Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, c/nE1472/5.
Trapping, shooting, and poisoning, like hunting with dogs and ferreting,
reduced rabbit numbers in cultivated land and sown pastures, but the pest found
refuge in tracts of partly transformed tussock grass and shrublands, along the
banks and in the seasonally dry gravel beds of rivers and streams, as well as in
the sod walls that the first-generation European settlers had erected to partition
their properties. They also thrived under gorse and broom hedges, in the shelter
of bracken fern and matagouri (Discaria toumatou), and in rampant growths of
gorse and broom along roads and railway rights of way. By the early 1880s, a
land holders task had changed from the simple eradication of rabbits wherever
they might be on the property to a more targeted strategy of reducing or clearing
refuge areas, controlling access to palatable herbage, killing as many animals as
was possible, and discouraging survivors from breeding. This involved labourintensive work in the environmental patches, bands, and surfaces of a property
and, as a superintending inspector reported to parliament, in shearing and
harvest time the difficulty of obtaining hands, together with the rapidity with
which the rabbit increases at this season, to a great extent nullifies the autumn
and winter efforts.50
50 AJHR, H-2:2, 1884.

56
In Central Otago, periodic conjunctions of drought and large numbers of rabbits

left the ground almost denuded of palatable shoots for sheep and cattle, allowing
populations of rabbits to become re-established a few months after intensive
shooting and poisoning had virtually eradicated them from a property. In his
letter book, the manager of Ida Valley Station recorded in early December 1882
that rabbits were thriving in the depleted rangeland, browsing regenerating
herbs and fine grasses before they could recover sufficiently to support the
normal number of sheep, and breeding at a fearful rate after several months
of drought.51 The writer also suspected that intensive poisoning of rabbits
had lifted the normal winter death rate among his sheep by half a point to
3.1percent.52 The situation had improved by 1886, but he feared a resurgence
in rabbit numbers after two years of intensive poisoning because the depleted
vegetation cover had not had sufficient time to recover.53
In the 1890s, frequent episodes of stormy weather and intervening mild spells
took place alongside economic depression, leading to fluctuating numbers of
rabbits on back-country properties. Mild, moist winters, in contrast, ensured
good pasture growth for sheep, but unfavourable conditions for young rabbits,
which usually did better in cool, dry winters when snow and severe frost did
not mask herbage and cause starvation.54
How did settlers attempt to control rabbit numbers? A former naval man,
Captain J. W. Raymond of Southland, claimed to have been the first to dress oats
with phosphorus for poisoning rabbits.55 Phosphorus was sold in sealed cans,
usually containing six pounds of the substance, by rural supply companies.
Another two poisons, arsenic and strychnine, were available from pharmacies
and land companies. In the late nineteenth century, when phosphorised pollard
was preferred, farmers could buy it ready-mixed, although rural people were
still mixing their own supplies in the first decade of the twentieth century.56
Land holders in areas infested by rabbits found it an unpredictable poison.
In some seasons it was freely taken by rabbits, but at other times and in
different habitats the animals would not touch it. In 1896, the manager of Ida
Valley Station recorded in his letter book that he was not at all satisfied with
the results of poisoningplenty of poison laid but great numbers of rabbits
51 Managers letter book, Ida Valley Station, 1 December 1882, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
52 Ibid., letter dated 8 April 1885.
53 Ibid., letter dated 1 November 1886.
54 Peter Holland, Home in the Howling Wilderness: Settlers and the Environment in Southern New Zealand
(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013), 51.
55 In addition to a long article published by The Argus (Melbourne) on 3 March 1881, several articles and
letters to the editor about Raymonds claim were published by the Southland Times (Invercargill), notably on
4 November 1880 and 21 February and 7 October 1884.
56 Holland, Home in the Howling Wilderness, 154.
57
[remain] on Poolburn face and elsewhere.57 Three years later, he could report to
the absentee leaseholder: [I] did not see many rabbits ... the poisons seemed to
be clearing them well.58
During the plague years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the
preferred means of exterminating rabbits on farm and station were poisoning,
trapping, shooting, and predation by the animals natural enemy. Ferrets
and other mustelids were imported from Great Britain, bred by government
establishments, and then sold to land holders for about seven shillings each.
In the early days, ferrets were fastened to long leads and released in rabbit
burrows. On some properties, wild populations of ferrets persisted for several
years until they were decimated by tuberculosis and winter cold. Although the
words ferret, stoat, and weasel are common in official reports, newspaper
articles, and private papers, the correctness of identification is uncertain.
Governmental support for introduced natural enemies waned when cats and
mustelids spread into indigeneous ecosystems and began to predate on native
birds and reptiles.
Land holders exploited the incidental benefits of stormy weather that caused
rabbits to leave their burrows, or when floods drowned the animals or forced
them into the open, where they could be shot. A habitat-centred approach to
pest management was evident by the 1880s, when land holders cleared shrubby
growth along property boundaries, burned bracken fern, and cleared shrubs
from rough ground to reduce cover. The language used in advertising and
promotional material relating to pest management on productive land was often
militaristic in tone: aggressor, dominance, evil, invasion, and plague.59
Between the start of the First World War and the end of the Second, labour was
expensive and rabbit eradication was largely directed by rabbit boards governed
by representative groups of local land holders, who reported to the Department
of Agriculture in Wellington. Individual and communal agency were involved in
this, and while the prime driver of rabbit eradication was protection of pastures
and range land as an economic resource, there were signs of a growing feeling
of stewardship for indigenous plants and animals. By 30September 1929, the
manager of the Dunedin branch of the NMA could inform the Head Office in
Edinburgh: Rabbits are practically exterminated in Central Otago, and this,
together with irrigation, has completely changed the outlook of this large tract
57 Managers diary, Ida Valley Station, 8 August 1896, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago, MS-0658.
58 Ibid., 3 March 1899.
59 Tom Brooking and Vaughan Wood, The grasslands revolution reconsidered, in Making a New Land:
Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press,
2013), 193208.
58
of country.60 The following decade, however, rabbit numbers again increased,

and rabbit boards experienced a resurgence of intense activity. In the late 1940s,
public meetings were called to discuss the rabbit problem and the recently
promulgated national killer policy.61
Rabbits and cover

After the Second World War, rabbit board staff and contractors were experiencing
difficulties with poisoned bait, one board reporting to the national Rabbit
Destruction Council that carrots and strychnine poisoning have not this year
been successful, and so far phosphorised pollard had also been a failure, and [we]
request the Council to advise if any further results have been obtained from the
investigations into a new poison.62 But a greater problem was the large amount
of cover in the rural landscape. On 21 November 1951, a contractor tendered to
clear lupins that were sheltering rabbits on dredge tailings,63 and in their efforts
to rid one overgrown area of rabbits employees of the Cardrona Rabbit Board
had to cut four lanes through a thick patch of broom and shoot in each block
separately after packs of dogs had excavated burrows.64 Thefollowing month
an inspector reported:
it has been a heavy breeding season; there is a lot of cover about this year, which
makes it difficult to hole up rabbits for larviciding.65 We have a big patch of
thistles on Dillons property, impossible for men or dogs to work, so [we] have
used [a] Landrover and mower to cut same, [being] the only possible way to get
the rabbits out.66
The situation had become sufficiently serious for one board to petition the
Department of Agriculture to carry out trials with myxomatosis in its district.67
The importance of habitat clearance in conjunction with poisoning and shooting
led to the following remit being put to the vote at the July 1971 conference of the
South Island Pest Destruction Board: As cover is proving a formidable barrier to
60 NMA miscellaneous papers, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, UN-028,
Box288.
61 Manuherikia Rabbit Board minutes, 26 January 1949, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, AG-631-5.
62 Kokonga-Tiroiti Rabbit Board minutes, 29 June 1951, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
63 Earnscleugh Rabbit Board minutes, 25 November 1951, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
64 Cardrona Rabbit Board minutes, 6 December 1951, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago, AG-525-1.
65 Since the 1870s, chloropicrin gas, known as Larvicide, has been used to fumigate occupied rabbit
burrows and warrens.
66 Cardrona Rabbit Board minutes, 31 January 1952, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago, AG-525-1.
67 Strath Taieri Rabbit Board minutes, December 1951, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago, AG-336-1.
59
eradication for Boards, that government make available an increased subsidy on

herbicides [which were then acknowledged as more effective in the long term
than burning] for purposes of pest destruction by county councils.68 It failed, but
throughout Otago, rabbit boards and the pest destruction boards which succeeded
them found that rabbits were more numerous in, and more likely to return after
shooting and poisoning to, land where gorse and broom hedges were common.
The latter were described by one of those organisations as the major problem in
flat country.69 Rabbit boards targeted places where the pest was numerous, and
in view of the heavy infestation of rabbits in his district, one exasperated manager
suggested that the area be bulldozed and ploughed to clear the gorse shelter from
it.70 In the same spirit, an inspector employed by another board reported that the
Shotover River bank was to be cleared up as soon as possible, and if necessary,
additional labour was to be engaged to expedite the work.71
Removal of large and small areas of plant cover was seen as essential to managing
rabbit numbers: plantations of trees with dense undergrowth, rampant broom
and gorse hedges, patches of bracken fern, clumps of thistle, even sweet-briar,
matagouri and cocksfoot, the terrific growth of which was causing serious
delay in gaining control over rabbits.72 This had been recognised in the 1890s,
when the Superintending Inspector of Rabbits reported to Parliament that the
Otago Rabbit District was experiencing a very serious spread of gorse and
broom on river banks, mining reserves, public roads and unoccupied private
lands. Areas that had been cleared of rabbits a few months earlier were deemed
at risk of reinfestation through occupation of and dispersal along lines of
shrubs and tall grass on stream banks as well as gorse and broom in river beds.73
TheJuly1956 Minutes of the Taieri Ridge Rabbit Board recorded:
68 Silver Peaks Pest Destruction Board miscellaneous papers, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, 97-156.
69 Blackstone Pest Destruction Board minutes, 2 February 1973, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
70 Strath Taieri Rabbit Board minutes, March 1950, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of
Otago, AG-336-1.
71 Lake Wakatipu Rabbit Board minutes, 11 June 1951, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago, AG-237.
72 Lake Wakatipu Rabbit Board minutes, 14 February 1955, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, AG-237.
73 Manuherikia Rabbit Board minutes, 10 November 1954, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, AG-631-5; Cairnhill Rabbit Board minutes, 24 August 1955, Hocken Collections, Uare
Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, AG-746-01; Leaning Rock Rabbit Board minutes, 6 May 1957, Hocken
Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, AG-747-2; Cardrona Rabbit Board minutes, 7 August
1959, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, AG-525-1). For comments on gorse
hedges as sources of self-sown plants in railway rights-of-way see Cardrona Rabbit Board minutes, 2 February
1956, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, AG-525-1.
60
The increasing growth of rough cover in the gullies was discussed by members
who considered that the only satisfactory method of clearing these gullies of
rabbits was to burn out the scrub. This would leave the gully in an open condition
for some seasons and prevent pockets of rabbits from accumulating there.74
The situation in the 1960s indicated little change in 70 years. Large and small
areas of rough ground, along with belts of cover and piles of hedge clippings and
orchard-tree prunings, were targeted for clearance. One inspector reported that
a greater number of young rabbits appeared to have survived this year due to
the use of 1080 and Larvicide which destroyed the natural enemy [cats, hawks,
and mustelids], plus the exceptionally dry season.75 In 1962, the secretary of
a rabbit board in eastern Otago was directed to advise the local county council
that rampant gorse and broom on road lines were hampering the boards efforts
to eradicate rabbits, and that viable seeds of these two noxious weeds were
reaching previously clean areas in loads of river shingle collected by council
workers for road repair.76 Another inspector reported seeing the odd rabbit in
quite heavy tussock, and when followed these rabbits do not appear to have any
warren or hole to go to, but appear to live in the heavy tussock in the manner of
hares.77 Rabbits were evidently exhibiting behavioural shifts that complicated
the task of extermination. Large and small patches of cover offered refuge for
rabbits, but rough ground alongside river courses and in valleys facilitated their
persistence and dispersal.
Like land holders in the final two decades of the nineteenth century, rabbit
boards used different eradication methods throughout the year, typically
dogs, poisonous gases, phosphorised oats and pollard in summer, and aerial
drops of carrots dressed with 1080 poison in winter. They, too, found that
some poisons occasionally worked well while others were unreliable.78
The national Agricultural Pests Destruction Council believed that noxious
weeds and agricultural pests went hand in hand, and that the elected rabbit
destruction boards were the obvious and logical agents to undertake this work:
74 Taieri Ridge Pest Destruction Board minutes, July 1956, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, 97-144.
75 Mid-Wakatipu Rabbit Board minutes, 6 February 1961, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, AG-737. Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) is a naturally occurring, toxic plant product
present in a small number of species worldwide and deters herbivory. It has been produced commercially
since the early 1940s and is widely used in New Zealand to eradicate feral rabbits, rats, stoats, and weasels.
76 Strath Taieri Rabbit Board minutes, 8 March 1962, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University
of Otago, AG-336-1.
77 Cardrona Rabbit Board minutes, 6 May 1963, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of
Otago, AG-525-1.
78 For an account of the methods employed by professional rabbiters in the mid-twentieth century see
W. H. McLean, Rabbits GaloreOn the Other Side of the Fence (Wellington: Reed, 1966). For information
about the more limited palette of methods currently employed for eradicating rabbits see National Pest Control
Agencies, Pest Rabbits: Monitoring and Control Good Practice Guidelines (Wellington: National Pest Control
Agencies, 2012).
61
Noxious weeds would be a greater menace than the rabbit pest, and Boards
should look closely at this.79 The Council had correctly assessed the related
risks posed by rabbits and noxious weeds, but few pest destruction boards were
willing to take on the responsibility for controlling a second noxious organism.
In 1980, J. A. Powell reported that
the Wakatipu District is like many other parts of New Zealand where better
land usage, development and better stock management are all against the rabbit.
The wetter season and better ground cover have been responsible for a marked
decrease in rabbit numbers where no control work has been done on several
areas in this district.80
In a further report to the same body, Powell recommended: because of the amount
of cover, [bracken] fern, briar, brush weeds, matagouri etc, neither trapping nor
shooting of any sort [should be undertaken] and the rabbits [should be left]
completely alone until they can be oat poisoned.81 Significantly, he recognised
that opportunistic plant species, native as well as introduced, could thrive in
the environmentally disturbed habitats of a transformed landscape and harbour
other early successional plants and pest animals. Four years later, Powell showed
a deeper ecological understanding of rabbit infestation when in his confidential
report to Central Otago Pest Destruction Boards he stressed the importance of
understanding rabbit behaviour:
Odd places, actually, showed a decrease in rabbits without any control having
been applied. The removal of bracken fern, scrub manuka, and noxious brushweed cover, coupled with improved pasture, would be the reason for the
decreased rabbit numbers in a number of places ... longer grass, when wet[,] has
the same effect of destroying young rabbits.82
While they were learning to manage irruptions of rabbits on their land,

individual settlers recognised the role played by self-sown and planted gorse in
harbouring the pest. They also found that thistles, a noxious weed of pastures
and crop-land, were also involved. The agricultural and pastoral systems that
they had created were proving difficult and costly to manage, and Californian
thistle would continue to challenge rural people in southern New Zealand until
the 1950s, when hormone herbicides became commercially available.
79 Cardrona Pest Destruction Board minutes, 15 November 1972, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
80 Wakatipu Coordinating Committee of the Agricultural Pests Destruction Council minutes, Hocken
Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, 97-145.
81 Ibid., November 1980.
82 Confidential report to the combined Wakatipu, mid-Wakatipu, Glenorchy, and Upper Shotover Pest
Destruction Boards: loose-leaf copy in the minutes of the Upper Shotover Pest Destruction Board, November
1984, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, 97-145.
62
Thistles
Entries in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century farm and station diaries
frequently mentioned thistles, but rarely named the species. In New Zealand,
most members of the Cardueae are thistles, but Californian thistle (Cirsium
arvense), which was also known as Canadian thistle in the nineteenth century,83
apparently predominated. Nodding thistle (Carduus nutans) and Scotch thistle
(Cirsium vulgare) might have become established later.84 The first of these is
perennial and forms dense clumps with the aid of rhizomes; nodding thistle
is annual or biennial, making it easier to eradicate by physical means; Scotch
thistle is annual or biennial, and commonly found as a single plant. All three
produce large quantities of wind-blown seed and grow in cultivated, disturbed,
or waste ground, in pastures and gardens, on road verges and railway yards, and
occasionally in environmentally disturbed tussock grassland. In 1922, G. M.
Thomson described Californian thistle as sporadically all over the country in
cultivated fields ... [and] particularly abundant and aggressive in half-cleared
bush.85 On farms and stations in the South, thistles were controlled in pastures
and crop-land by rolling, chipping, excavating, and burning until hormone
sprays became commercially available.
Thistles probably reached southern New Zealand in cargoes of imported pasture
plant seeds that were then spread by the wind, as pollutants in bags of seed,
in the fleeces of sheep brought in from other parts of the country, or in mud
on wheeled vehicles. In July 1928, the manager of the Ashburton branch of
the NMA contacted a station manager to advise the availability of Alsike clover
seed double-dressed to safeguard against the possibility of any Thistle seed.86
Once they had become established on a property, thistles thrived, flowered,
produced heavy crops of seed, and spread rapidly. On 12 March 1878, the
Cromwell Argus published a short piece about the abundance of thistledown in
the Lake Wanaka area, and at the same time two farmers visiting New Zealand
from Leicestershire reported thistledown landing on the deck of their steamer,
two miles off the Hawkes Bay coast. They later described masses of thistledown
blowing across the streets of Christchurch like a slight snow storm.87

84 C. J. Webb, W. R. Sykes, and P. J. Garnock-Jones, Flora of New Zealand, vol. 4, Naturalised Pteridophytes,
Gymnosperms, Dicotyledons (Christchurch: Botany Division, DSIR, 1988).
86 Hakataramea Station inward letters, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, UN028, Box 206.
87 S. Grant and J. Foster, New Zealand: A Report on its Agricultural Conditions and Prospects (London:
G.Street, 1880), 20.
63
Young thistles thrived in the nutrient-rich soils of newly-ploughed ground,

and threatened to suppress broom and gorse seedlings, as well as the rooted
cuttings of hawthorn, that settlers established in ploughed strips or on low
banks of overturned sod for hedges. In the 1860s and 70s, farmers and station
holders frequently noted in their diaries and letter books how hard it was
to remove weeds from around a gorse seedling without damaging the young
plant. On15November 1875, the manager of Taipo Hill station in North Otago
informed the absentee land holder that the hedges which have been planted this
year are all doing well so far [but] they take a lot of weeding. They are sometimes
smothered with weeds and we dare not touch them for fear of pulling up the
[hedge] plants. We must let them grow before we can weed them.88 Tenyears
later, settlers and property managers were recording in their diaries the heroic
efforts needed to chip or uproot gorse and broom seedlings from fields and
pastures, alongside roads and tracks, and in the beds of rivers and streams.
Rabbits and sheep

The close functional links between gross environmental disturbance, self-sown
gorse, infestations of rabbits, and rampant growth of thistles are evident in farm
and station diaries, the minutes of rabbit and pest destruction boards and other
local body minutes, the published reports of national bodies, and newspaper
articles (Table 1). Equally telling are long records of numbers of sheep shorn on
a property and either the value or the number of rabbit skins sent away for sale.
The latter two are fair surrogates for rabbit density because land holders were
legally required to keep rabbit numbers down, properties were visited annually
by government inspectors, and there were stern penalties for failing to eradicate
the pest.
Table 1: Examples of the links between environmental disturbance, gorse,
rabbits, and thistles.
Environmental disturbance and gorse
James grubbing out whins [i. e. gorse] in West End Paddock (David Wallace diaries, 4 September 1884).
David chipping and burning whins [in partly cleared tussock] on Camping Spur (David Wallace
diaries, 28 April 1886).
Johnnie Mitchell cutting down stray gorse growing from the fence (Joseph Davidson diaries,
13June1894).
Environmental disturbance and rabbits
Set 35 [rabbit] traps in Racecourse Paddock (Joseph Davidson diaries, 10 August 1900).
Shot rabbits on [recently] burned ground (James Wither diaries, 25 September 1902).
Mitchell got 44 rabbits out of Moffats turnips (Joseph Davidson diaries, 13 May 1904).
88 Nugent Wades letter books, South Canterbury Museum, Timaru.

64
Environmental disturbance and thistles

Three [men] cut thistles and one grubbed in ploughed paddock (David Wallace diaries, 11 January 1879).
John ploughing small patches of Canadian thistles in swede paddock (Cody family diaries, 17 April 1917).
Cutting Scotch thistles out of fescue in top paddock (Cody family diaries, 27 December 1949).
Gorse and rabbits
The first case heard was a charge against A. Christie, of Brighton, who was charged with failing to
destroy the rabbits on his property.Defendant pleaded not guilty.R. Johnston, rabbit inspector,
stated that on September 23 his attention was drawn to the number of rabbits along the gorse
fences on the defendants land at Brighton. Principally young rabbits were to be seen, and they were
there in large numbers. On the 24th of September, accompanied by Stock-inspector Fullarton, [the]
witness visited the place, and rode over the sections. They found the gorse very thick, and they also
saw many young rabbits. (Otago Witness, 1 December 1892).
I had a look around the gorse fence; got nine poisoned rabbits spoiled with the hawks. (Joseph
Davidson diaries, 3 August 1903).
The road lines, gorse hedges and briars are becoming a bigger problem every year, and it is almost
impossible to get rabbits out of some of these areas (Lake Wakatipu Rabbit Board minutes, 14
February 1955).
The Board wrote to the Otago Catchment Board for a subsidy or other financial assistance to enable
the Board to eradicate the gorse on the river flats, and in particular the Von River flats where cover is
harbouring rabbits (Mid-Wakatipu Rabbit Board minutes, 19 August 1963).
In the fumigation programme, open tussock country appeared in fair order, but any areas of cover
matagouri, briar, gorse and broomhad large quantities of rabbit (Leaning Rock Pest Destruction
Board minutes, 24 March 1970).
The rabbit which is in this type of country appears to live in gorse hedges and broom, which is
increasing very quickly. I do feel that we must do something in regards to the cover as I am sure it is
our major problem on flat country (Blackstone Pest Destruction Board minutes, 2 February 1973).
Gorse and thistles
Riddle weeding gorse hedge (Kauru Hill diaries, 28 January 1867).
Matthew cleaning up [i. e. weeding] round hedges in garden (Kauru Hill diaries, 29 May 1873).
McToben cleaning gorse seed hedges (Kauru Hill diaries, 9 October 1873).
Rabbits and thistles
Cutting thistles and laying rabbit poison (David Wallace diaries, 20 January 1906).
The thick growth of Scotch thistles [on Morven Hill ] made [rabbit eradication] work on this area
arduous (Lake Wakatipu Rabbit Board minutes, 7 April 1952).
Sources: The Kauru Hill diaries, held by the North Otago Museum and Archive, Oamaru; all other
documentary sources are from the Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago,
Dunedin.
We traced more than three decades of such records (from 1874 to 1907) for
Otematata Station in the Waitaki Valley and 40 years (from 1891 to 1930) for
nearby Hakataramea Station. The former showed sheep numbers increasing
from 25,000 in 1874 to 28,000 11 years later (Figure 1). The first reference
to rabbits was in 1885. Three years later the number of skins sent from the
property had surged to 200,000. Sheep numbers declined while rabbit numbers
remained high, but began to rise again in the late 1890s. There was a second
surge in numbers of rabbits killed each year between 1893 and 1895, and
asubsequent decline in sheep numbers. Rabbits on the station were evidently
65
coming under control in the final three years of the nineteenth century, when
their numbers declined to levels not seen since the mid-1880s, but later became
more abundant. Thesituation in the first decade of the twentieth century was
strikingly different from earlier years in that sheep numbers declined while
numbers of rabbits killed were not historically large.
Figure 1: Numbers of rabbits killed (upper diagram) and sheep shorn

(lower diagram) from 1874 to 1907 at Otematata Station in the Waitaki
Valley. The three diagonal bands show the impact of spikes in rabbit
density on flock size, and the question marks indicate uncertainty when
increasing numbers of rabbits affected flock size.
Source: The authors work, after NMA archive, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of
Otago, UN-028, Box 316).
The managers records for Otematata Station include the annotation snow
against the 1904 tally of sheep shorn. The early years of the twentieth century
were punctuated by adverse weather in Central Otago, the Mackenzie Country,
and upper Waitaki Valley, as well as inland south and mid-Canterbury, but
apparently not farther south. A report to the 1903 Annual General Meeting
of the NMA in Edinburgh noted that a very serious snow storm took place
in New Zealand on 17th July [1903] and from the advices we have received
66
Ifear that a considerable number of sheep on Hakataramea Station and a smaller

number in Kawarau [Station, Central Otago] have succumbed.89 The Timaru
Herald published several short articles about the adverse effects of winter
snow-storms in inland south Canterbury, and on 11 July 1903 reported that
the railway line from Timaru to Fairlie was blocked by snow-drifts. The link
was not restored until 20 July. On 14 October 1904, the newspaper reported a
major snowfall at Burkes Pass and in adjoining parts of south Canterbury that
had disastrous effects on [new-born] lambs. It is likely that adverse weather
in winter and early spring led to widespread major stock losses and allowed
rabbit numbers to increase until they could be brought back under control in
the second half of the decade.
A similar analysis for Hakataramea Station showed the number of sheep
shorn reached a peak in 1901 then declined, presumably in response to the
reduced availability of nutritious forage on the property, but also to the
managers awareness of long-term carrying capacity and the need to reduce
flock size. Thisdecline continued until 1930, when records ceased (Figure 2).
Missingrecords meant that we could not confirm the loss of sheep after heavy
snowfalls, but we were able to collate annual expenditure on rabbit eradication
and annual income from the sale of rabbit skins. Rabbit numbers on the property
varied little between 1891 and the outbreak of the First World War, but by
the end of hostilities Hakataramea Station had a serious rabbit problem, one
that demanded major outlays on labour and materials. The sum spent on rabbit
eradication between 1919 and 1926 (2,800), bracketing the period of intense
activity, was greater than revenue from sale of the skins (2,000), implying that
pest eradication, rather than a secondary income stream, was the goal. Thegraph
of numbers of sheep shorn each year shows a small peak in 1894, a larger peak in
1901 and then a long decline. Sheep numbers on the station were at their lowest
when rabbit numbers were at their highest.
89 NMA miscellaneous documents, 1903, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago,
UN-028, Box 289.
67
Figure 2: Cost of rabbit eradication and revenue from rabbit skins sold
(upper diagram), and the number of sheep shorn (lower diagram) from
1891 to 1930 at Hakataramea Station in the Waitaki Valley.
Source: The authors work, after NMA archive, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of
Otago, UN-028, Box 284.
Five case studies

The following words from a letter written on 21 April 1888 by the manager
of the Invercargill branch of the NMA about a property at Seaward Downs,
10 kilometres south of Edendale in Southland in which the Company had a
financial interest,90 point to links between cultivation, pasture management,
infestations of weedy plants, rabbits, and uncontrolled gorse:
68
90 NMA miscellaneous documents, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, UN-028,
Shelf 785D, parcel.
Everything had been most shamefully neglected, the fences being all in bad
repair, the gorse overgrown and [fence] posts rotting ... Along the hedgerows
rabbits are numerous but when the gorse is trimmed a few weeks trapping should
get them well under [control], the fences at present being their chief station.
A great portion of the land appears to have been cropped two or three times and
then left without sowing down, and now carries nothing but what has sprung up
from the soil: [the grass, Yorkshire] fog and thistles chiefly, and this principally
below the road where the land is very good, judging from the strong growth of
the latter.
Five of our seven key sources91 contained sufficient information to enable us

to estimate numbers of man-days per year expended on (a) burning tussock,
clearing fern and shrubs, draining wetlands, and ploughing, (b) clipping
broom and gorse hedges, disposing of the trash, and chipping self-sown plants
from pastures and roadsides, (c) either chipping or digging up thistles, and
(d)eradicating rabbits.
Figure 3: Man-days per annum spent on burning, cultivation, and drainage

(upper diagram), chipping or digging up thistles (second diagram),
and caring for domestic rabbits (bottom diagram) on Puketoi Station,
Maniototo, Otago, from 1859 to 1868.
Source: The authors work, after James Murisons diaries, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, ARC-0612.
91 See note 20.
69
Our earliest documentary records were from James Murisons station, Puketoi in
Central Otago, where there could have been some cultivation before 1859 when
Murison took over the lease, but from then until the station was sold a decade later
the investment in human labour for land preparation and ploughing increased.
In tandem, the effort to clear herbaceous weeds rose exponentially, with the
most rapid increase after 1864 (Figure 3). Murisons only references to rabbits
were to hutches for two domestic animals and their progeny. Twentyyears later,
this property in the Maniototo was one of the worst affected by rabbits, and
remained so until the late twentieth century. In his diaries, Murison referred to
broom hedges around the homestead in 1867 and 1868, but not to gorse.

(upper diagram), chipping or digging up thistles (second diagram), clipping
mainly gorse hedges and chipping volunteer growth (third diagram), and
hunting rabbits for sport and food (bottom diagram) on ThePoint Station,
mid-Canterbury, from 1866 to 1870.
Source: The authors work, after the Point Journal, Canterbury Museum and Archive, Christchurch.
70
The second long run of documentary records was for The Point Station, located
on the high plains and foothills of mid-Canterbury. It had been occupied for
at least a decade before the Phillips family took up the lease in August 1866,
but we did not find any record of cultivation before that date. By 1870, weeds
were sufficiently common to require 60 man-days of labour in newly cleared
and cultivated ground on a terrace of the Rakaia River, where the family
grew oats to feed their draught and saddle horses, potatoes for residents and
the domestic pigs, English grasses for hay, and wheat and barley for sale in
Christchurch (Figure 4). From the outset, the Phillips family, their employees
and contractors had established gorse and broom hedges, and by 1868 were
investing more than 30 man-days annually clipping them after flowering as well
as chipping self-sown plants from sown pastures and crop-land, and along the
property boundaries. The main references to rabbits were to those shot during
recreational hunting trips to the nearby bed of the Rakaia River. The bags were
small, on some trips rabbits were not caught, and there were few references in
the diaries to these animals occupying ground away from the river bed or eating
garden, pasture and crop plants.
John Wither took over the lease of Sunnyside Station on the south shore of
Lake Wakatipu in 1872. He then began an annual programme of burning and
grubbing tussock, clearing small shrubs and clumps of bracken fern, draining
depressions, and ploughing the lower terraces. He continued this regime
until 1889, but from then until he handed over to his son in 1903 he reported
generally less environmentally transformative work. His investment in labour to
clear herbaceous weeds remained small until the early 1880s, rose to a peak in
1887, and then declined to a long-term maintenance level. In 1898, the troughs
evident in the three parts of this diagram were the consequence of heavy falls
of snow and severe cold killing many of his sheep and forcing him to employ
his financial resources to rebuild his flock. Rabbit eradication followed a similar
pattern, although the peak was six years earlier (Figure 5). Rabbits evidently
reached Sunnyside in 187576 but were uncommon until 187778, when the
amount of labour required for eradication increased sharply. For a decade,
labour input for pest eradication was often between 250 and 350 man-days per
year, but declined after a second peak in 1890 as Wither, his employees, and
contractors gained control over the pest. There was a third peak in 1900, and a
rapid falling away thereafter. The stations broom, hawthorn, and gorse hedges
required the normal maintenance, but Wither did not refer to self-sown plants
of these three species. Figure 6 shows that extensive ploughing, burning, and
wetland drainage created novel ecological opportunities for herbaceous weeds
and rabbits, and as the pace of gross environmental disturbance declined,
rabbits had access to progressively fewer niches and less manpower was needed
to keep their numbers under control.
71

clipping and clearing mostly gorse (third diagram), and exterminating
rabbits (bottom diagram) on Sunnyside Station, Lake Wakatipu Basin,
Otago, from 1872 to 1903.
Source: The authors work, after James Withers diaries, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, 89149.
72

clipping mostly gorse hedges and chipping volunteer growth (third
diagram), and exterminating rabbits (bottom diagram) on the Davidson
family farm near Waikaia in northern Southland from 1874 to 1905.
Source: The authors work, after Joseph Davidson Senior and Junior diaries, Hocken Collections, Uare
Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, AG-523.
In the late 1870s, Joseph Davidson began to experience the first wave of rabbits
moving northwards out of the Southland plains and into the low hill country
along river valleys, formed tracks, and railway rights of way. Albeit with
occasional recourse to professional rabbiters, he and his sons were able to keep
the pest under control. The most rapid changes came after 1890, when he and
his family increased the pace of tussock clearance on the low hill country and
cultivated more terrace land beside the Waikaia River (Figure 6). Weed removal
usually required more labour than did clearance and cultivation of tussock,
shrub, and fern lands, or drainage of wetlands. There was a third surge in labour
expended on rabbit extermination in 1885, then a slow decline to the end of the
record in 1905. Significantly, Davidson had begun to target gorse and the much
less common broom hedges as sites for rabbit extermination in the early 1890s,
and after 1895 removed hedges and levelled sod walls. In the final decade of the
73
documentary record, Davidson was regularly poisoning rabbits in his pastures,

shooting them in river and stream valleys, poisoning them in the small area of
modified tussock remaining in a hilly corner of his farm, and monitoring their
spread from shrubby areas on neighbouring properties. His most persistent
problem, and one that would remain until herbicides became available, was
infestation of cultivated fields and hedgerows by Californian and Scotch thistles,
sheep sorrel, vetch, and other herbaceous weeds.

clipping mostly gorse hedges and chipping volunteer growth (third
diagram) and exterminating rabbits (bottom diagram) on the Wallace family
farm, Clinton, Southland, from 1877 to 1897.
Source: The authors work, after David Wallaces diaries, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena,
University of Otago, MS4031.
74
The documentary record for David Wallaces farm near Clinton in eastern
Southland showed a more complex situation. After an initial surge in cultivation
and burning, there was a comparatively quiet decade before a second surge
that lasted six years from 1892 (Figure 7). Rabbits were a persistent but not
serious problem after 1885, and herbaceous weeds were kept under control by
chipping and cultivation. Maintenance of gorse and broom hedges, and removal
of volunteer plants, however, required costly outlays of human labour as hedges
matured and self-sown plants became established in pastures.
Rabbits also caused economic hardship and environmental difficulties for James
Preston on his sheep stations in Central Otago, the upper Waitaki Valley, and the
Mackenzie Country,92 and he occasionally directed rabbiters to clear gorse from
river beds and other preferred rabbit habitats on Haldon Station.93 Overa period
of five years at Black Forest Station in the upper Waitaki Valley, two thirds of
his annual financial outlay went to paying for exterminating rabbits. At the end
of this period, Preston was unable to carry the financial burden and had to give
up the lease.
In years when damp winters facilitated a dense sward of pasture grasses,
intensive land use, property development, and livestock management weighed
against the rabbit.94 Elsewhere in Otago, the rabbit inspector, J. A. Powell, had
noted a decrease in rabbit numbers without eradication measures having been
applied, and concluded that clearance of bracken, manuka, and noxious brushweed cover, coupled with increase in the area of improved pasture, had led to
the drop in rabbit numbers.95
The rise of gorse, rabbits, and thistles in

southern New Zealand
By the 1870s, settlers in the lowlands of southern New Zealand were experiencing
the adverse effects of environmental disturbance; the Kauru Hill diaries from
north Otago96 contain many references to Californian thistles springing up a
few weeks after the first furrow had been ploughed to mark the line of a fence,
hedge, or plantation. The seeds of thistles and other weedy plants reached
92 Holland, Home in the Howling Wilderness.
93 James Prestons diary, 26 May 1911, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago,
MS0989 / 277.
94 J. A. Powells report to the Wakatipu Coordinating Committee, Agricultural Pests Destruction Council,
Hocken Collections, 97-145.
95 J. A. Powells report to the combined Wakatipu, mid-Wakatipu, Glenorchy, and Upper Shotover Pest
Destruction Boards, in minutes of the Upper Shotover Pest Destruction Board, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka
o Hkena, University of Otago, 97-145.
96 Kauru Hill and Taipo Hill Station diaries, North Otago Museum, Oamaru.
75
aproperty on the backs of sheep bought from neighbouring properties or at

local sale-yards, as pollutants in sacks of pasture plant seeds and grain, and
in soil on rooted trees and shrubs. They germinated and found a congenial
habitat where the original vegetation cover had been fragmented, the litter layer
destroyed, and the top soil exposed. In the final three decades of the nineteenth
century, gorse, thistles, and rabbits made lightning progress through the grossly
transformed environments of the open country, facilitated by widespread
burning, ploughing, and drainage, development of a network of gravel roads,
nation-wide extension of railways, and the sparsely vegetated gravel beds and
banks of large and small rivers that drained from the uplands to the coast.
Anyexperience that rural settlers might have had with these three organisms
in the British Isles was scant preparation for what they would encounter in
southern New Zealand.
Land holders learned how to shoot, trap, and poison rabbits, but until organic
herbicides were commonly available they could only respond to outbreaks
of weedy plants with axe, saw, shovel, and a box of matches, although on
3March1911 James Preston recorded in his diary that an unnamed resident of
Haldon Station had put ground salt on thistles [to kill them].97 There was the
added spur of stern penalties if they failed, which diverted expensive labour
from property development to pest, plant, and animal control. Interestingly,
although the first three generations of settlers learned much about pest animals
and weeds, in their diaries we did not find a single acknowledgement that
the problems they were experiencing could have been substantially of their
ownmaking.
When viewed through the lenses of ecological theory and human and nonhuman agency, it is evident that in the last three decades of the nineteenth and
the first half of the twentieth century rural people in southern New Zealand were
experiencing the adverse consequences of gross environmental disturbance,
complicated by some of the most savage weather and severe flooding on record.
Directly as well as indirectly, individual human agency led to the spread and
establishment of weedy plants and pest animals on farms and stations, along
strips of land set aside for road and rail links, in small settlements, and in river
valleys. While land holders showed considerable resilience in the face of the
threats posed by introduced plant and animal pest species to their livelihoods,
communal agency spurred by legislation became essential in the 1880s.
As agents, individual land holders were responsible for eradicating weedy plants
and pest animals from their properties, observing the growth and behaviour of
these newcomers in the partly transformed environments of their properties,
97 James Prestons diary, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, MS-0989 / 277.
76
and using that knowledge to manage adverse effects. They also consulted
their neighbours about the timing and other details of control measures.
When communal agency in the form of other land holders, iwi, or the state
failed to keep rabbits under control, inspectors were hired by the state to check
properties in rabbit-affected areas, advise land holders about control measures,
set goals for eradication, and initiate legal action. Across southern New Zealand,
the role of thistles and gorse as refuge for rabbits was known by the 1880s,
but the sites where communal agency strove to bring them under control were
public lands alongside roads and tracks, and in the beds and banks of rivers and
streams. Even as the state was erecting regional rabbit-proof fences to restrict
the spread of rabbits, individual land holders were putting up netting fences
on vulnerable boundaries and within their properties to facilitate eradication
of the pest and guard against re-invasion. In effect, individual and communal
human agency operated in tandem from the 1880s onwards.
The experiences of land holders were shaped by new social and economic
networks, as well as new plants and new animals. In the early years of organised
settlement, the beneficial features of those economic, ecological, and human
relationships allowed settlers to prosper, but their unanticipated consequences
proved challenging in the long term because few land holders and commentators
recognised the ecological nature of a farm or station. In the 1860s, James Hector
had urged a scientific approach to agriculture and pastoral farming, and in a
speech read to Dunedin members of the Young Mens Christian Association in
1862, he promoted the model in which every farm was a laboratory, every field
an experiment, and every farmer a scientist: Exact observation is not merely
idle curiosity but leads to very practical results. Gather facts from year to year,
experiment if you can, and in time you will reap a harvest of profit.98
Hector had in mind carefully controlled experiments in which one factor at a
time would be isolated and evaluated, but ecological thinking calls for a holistic
approach. Things did not work out quite as Hector had advocated, and it took
time for rural people and their advisors to learn how to evaluate and apply
scientific principles to manage the new and ecologically untested ecosystems
that settlers had created on their properties.
One early commentator, William Pember Reeves, regretted the loss of beauty as
tracts of forest, tussock grass, shrub, and wetland gave way to farms and sheep
stations across New Zealand:
98 The Otago Daily Times reported James Hectors lecture, The utility of natural science, in its 24 October
1862 issue. Hector, who was trained as medical doctor in Scotland, was appointed Director of the Geological
Survey of Otago then Director of the Geological Survey and the Colonial Museum in Wellington. A productive
scientist and talented administrator, he also served as Director of the Meteorological Department, the Colonial
Observatory, the Wellington Time-ball Observatory, and the Wellington Botanic Garden.
77
Bitter the thought:

is this the price we pay?
The price for progress;
beauty swept away.99
What Reeves deplored was the consequence of an unmanaged shift from an

evolutionarily tested ecology to one where the desired end-point was virtually
hijacked by plant and animal interlopers from the Northern Hemisphere doing
what their genes had equipped them for. This is a long-standing theme in the
environmental history of New Zealand, and the books by Thomas Potts, Herbert
Guthrie-Smith, Andrew Clark, and Alfred Crosby chart the progress of the
nations thinking about its rural landscapes.100
It is now too late to turn back the tide of environmental transformation, but
there is a growing understanding amongst rural people of the desirable features
of a landscape in which sizeable remnants of once widespread ecosystems can
coexist with agro-systems in a functional, economically productive, harmonious,
aesthetically pleasing, and distinctive whole. Would the first generation of
European settlers in southern New Zealand have done things differently if the
core notions of scientific ecology had been formulated and disseminated in
the second half of the nineteenth century? We may also ask what might have
happened if the first generation of European settlers had developed their rural
properties at a slower pace, respecting lessons that they and their neighbours
had learned during their time on the land? An observant settler might have
learnt enough in a decade of close observation to make reasonably reliable
weather forecasts, but it would have taken a lifetime of dedicated observation
and experimentation to comprehend its ecology.101
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge invaluable assistance from the staff of the Hocken Collections,
Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, including permission to quote from
manuscript sources and reproduce historic photographs. The Chief Archivist
of the Canterbury Museum helped us gain permission to quote from The Point
99 William Pember Reeves, New Zealand, and Other Poems (London: Grant Richards, 1898). Several decades
later Herbert Guthrie-Smith sounded a more optimistic note when he wrote: The lamentable laissez-faire in
regard to misuse of the land and water is passing away. For the first time in the history of the globe we are
about to cease to maltreat this kindly old world of ours (Tutira, 3rd ed., 422).
100 Thomas Potts, Out in the Open: A Budget of Scraps of Natural History, Gathered in New Zealand
(Christchurch: Capper Press, 1976. 1st ed. 1882); Guthrie-Smith, Tutira; Andrew Clark, The Invasion of New
Zealand by People, Plants and Animals: The South Island (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1949);
Crosby, Ecological Imperialism.
101 Guthrie-Smith, Tutira.
78
Journal. The former Hocken Librarian, Stuart Strachan, directed us to the riches
of the National Mortgage & Agency Company archive held by the Hocken
Collections, and the Archivist at Fletcher Challenge kindly granted permission
for us to read and quote information from that material. Ossie Brown told us
about current practice in rabbit extermination in Central Otago. FrankLeckie
directed us to much useful manuscript and published material, and Dr George
Davis advised us about government reports. The referees and the editor helped
us clarify the argument. The diagrams were drafted by Tim Nolan, Black
Ant Mapping Solutions, Christchurch, and Peter Holland acknowledges the
generous provision of workspace and facilities by the Department of Geography,
University of Otago.
79
ENVIRONMENTAL NONGOVERNMENT ORGANISATIONS

INCHINA SINCE THE 1970S
SHENG FEI
Sun Yat-sen University
Email: feish@mail.sysu.edu.cn
Abstract
The expansion of environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs) in the past
two decades has been perhaps the most conspicuous phenomenon in the recent
history of civil society in China. Manyfactors promoted the early development of
ENGOs in China: the political reform of government, the defects of environmental
governance, public worries about environmental problems, international interaction,
and the efforts of influential elites. Inrecent years, ENGOs have been further boosted
by the change of public ideas about the environment, the professionalisation of
ENGOs, the development of the internet, and increasing environmental deterioration.
Nevertheless, Chinese ENGOs are facing four major challenges: economic difficulty,
low levels of specialisation, interior estrangement, and grass-roots isolation. Chinese
ENGOs are not hesitant to expose environmental problems or to criticise what they
perceive as negligent protection by government. However, confined by traditional
culture and current political institutional arrangements, ENGOs abstain from radical
confrontation with government. WhileChineseenvironmental problems remain serious
in the long term, the development of ENGOs in China is hopeful because younger
generations are more actively taking part in environmental protection and a further
political reform is progressing.
Keywords: environmental protest, Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations

(ENGOs), China, development.
Introduction
It is notable that during the past decades, Chinese Environmental
NonGovernment Organisations (ENGOs) have grown explosively, and continue
to do so. According to open statistics, there were 2,768 registered ENGOs in 2005,
with the number rising to 3,529 in 2008 and 7,881 by 2012.1 Thechanging figure
1 All-China Environmental Federation, Findings Report on ENGOs Development in China [
], Environment Protection [], 5b (2006): 61; Chinas ENGOs Increase to almost 8000,
People Daily (Overseas Edition), accessed 5 March 2013: www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-05/5584508.shtml,
accessed 12 July 2014.
81
clearly shows how fast Chinas environmental movement is expanding while

it also suggests increasing public anxiety about a deteriorating environment.
While environmental issues are given great notice by the Chinese public and
government, the nexus between ENGOs and government is still imbalanced.
Although there is success in pushing many popular movements, Chinese ENGOs
are shaped and sometimes constrained by Chinese political institutions and
traditional culture. On the one hand, the public regard government as the critical
factor in environmental protection while ENGOs are also themselves catalysts
for change. On the other hand, most Chinese ENGOs are neither independent
from state power nor tightly connected to genuine grassroots movements.
Consequently, while ENGOs are usually not hesitant to expose environmental
problems or to criticise a negligent government, they also abstain from radical
confrontation with government and are cautious to join in street demonstrations.
Chinese ENGOs seem more acceptable to government and in turn they receive
more freedom and flexibility than many other civil societies in China.
Civil society and NGOs in China

The term civil society is sometimes misunderstood by the Chinese public
because of its translation. Normally civil society is translated as shimin shehui or
gongmin shehui in Chinese. Although it contains the meaning of a realm separate
from government and private business, shehui scarcely points to organisation.
A more popular and accurate counterpart of civil society in Chinese should
be non-government organisation (NGO). Moreover, the conception of civil
society is sometimes sensitive in the Chinese official discourse because of its
deep origins in Western history and culture. As Edward Shils argues, the core
characteristic of civil society is civilitya civil collective self-consciousness
which makes civil politics possible and presumes in Western societies that
citizens are supposed to collaborate with each other.2 Therefore civil society
in the Western context presumes autonomy for non-government forces. Even
though the self-organisation of citizens may be fallible, it could protect them
from an incorrigible state or government.
However, Chinas top-down or pyramidal political culture and rigid bureaucratic
systems are always critical to understanding Chinese society. For example,
Thomas Metzger argued that Chinese civil society is heterogeneous and so-called
civility, evident in the West, is essentially absent in Chinese history. Put another
way, China never enjoyed the strong tradition of spontaneous self-governance
by common people apparent in many Western countries. Chinese society used
2 Edward Shils, The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society, Steven
Grosby, ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997), 335.
82
Environmental Non-Government Organisations inChina since the 1970s
to be efficiently governed by emperors who, mentally and morally served by

intelligent elites or Mandarins, were Sons of Heaven and people were naturally
their subjects. Public good could be always achieved and sustained by a
corrigible state.3 An influential Chinese political historian Xiao Gongqin also
declared that Chinese traditional culture never contained an idea that society
owns integrated rights free from state power.4 According to these views, in
China, government at different levels is most responsible for social governance.
In environmental history, one of the most evident cases is management of
the Yellow River by central government in imperial China. The river flooded
periodically and sometimes killed millions of residents in its flood plain, while
central government always sponsored dike construction and maintenance and
could call up labour from all around the country.5
The arguments of the authors above have been challenged in recent years,
because many scholars find that state power did not completely overwhelm
the autonomy of society. In effect, they argue that local Chinese communities,
at least since the sixteenth century and especially in rural areas, have been
delicately led by landed gentry (shishen), a group not directly absorbed and
constrained by collective government bureaucracy which formed a kind of
proto third realm of civil society.6 In this framework, local elites directed
many environmental issues, including construction of irrigation systems and
distribution of natural resources. Ironically this situation was not finally altered
until 1949 with NewChinas establishment, which soon turned into a totalitarian
state.7 During this period, China had many social movements, but almost no civil
activities. For example, in the Great Leap Forward (GLF, 19581962), people
were driven by an extreme official ideology to recklessly transform the physical
environment in the name of creating a new nature and nation. Civil society and
individualism, believed to be capitalist endeavors that obstructed the state from
concentrating resources to initiate grand projects, were repressed for almost
3 Thomas Metzger, The Western Concept of the Civil Society in the Context of Chinese History, 1997,
unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/Public/documents/ APCITY/UNPAN014782.pdf, accessed 12 July 2014.
4 Xiao Gongqin, Civil Society and the Three Obstacles of Chinas Modernization [
], Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly [] 5 (1993): 18996.
5 Ling Zhang, Harmony or Disharmony: Traditional Chinese and Their Natural Environment, in Naomi
Standen, ed., Demystifying China: New Understandings of Chinese History (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield,
2012), 7988; Zhang, Manipulating the Yellow River and the State Building of the Northern Song Dynasty,
in Carmen Meinhert, ed., Nature, the Environment and Climate Change in East Asia, (Leiden: Brill, 2013),
137159.
6 Li Fan, Silent Revolution: Civil Society in Modern China [: ]
(Hong Kong: Mirrors, 1998); Huang Zongzhi [Philip Huang], Public sphere and Civil society in
China? the third realm between state and society [ ?
] in Huang Zongzhi ed., The Debating Paradigms in China Studies []
(Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2003), 260288.
7 New China here points to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), established in 1949. In a later part of
this paper, Chinese government or government specifically refers to the PRC government.
83
thirty years.8 As currently every village or community has its Party branch, the
limited third realm of tradition has hardly recovered and so is not the crucial
force to stimulate ENGOs.
The development of civil society in China resumed in the early 1980s, with
the Reform and Opening-up Policies. As civil society expands, some optimists
suggest that it may evolve into a civil society similar to the West.9 However,
other scholars highlight its distinctive traits, rooted in tradition, that may
hamper its further development. Australian scholar He Baogang argues that
Chinas civil society is currently entangled with state power, so its autonomy
is hardly realised, and is a semi-civil society identical with Philip Huangs
definition of the third realm.10
Furthermore, Gordon White classifies the emerging Chinese civil society into
four categories: the first is the caged sector. Sponsored and manipulated by
the state, it attracts many regular people in the manner of organisations like the
Communist Youth League, which absorbed millions of students; the second is
the incorporated sector, usually professional organisations formally registered
by government even if many are independent NGOs. They are more acceptable
to authority because they are politically insensitive. The third sector, existing in
an interstitial or limbo world of civil society, is barely recognised by official
institutions. These organisations are very active in some professional circles
and most importantly have roots in some local communities, including among
patriarchal clans and religious organisations. They are sometimes suspected, but
rarely suppressed, by government. The fourth sector is the underground civil
society or the suppressed sector, which are usually accused of threatening
political security or being involved in criminal offenses. What are easily
identified as illegal are secret societies, radical political organisations, and
religious cults.11 Most Chinese ENGOs could be attributed to the former three
categories and are more inclined to exhibit characteristics of the first and second
sectors identified above.
In sum, China witnessed a long history of strong state and weak society during
which time civil society was not completely stifled. Although Chinese civil
society has enjoyed a kind of spring since 1980, the Chinese people are still
accustomed to allowing a centralised government to take responsibility for
8 Judith Shapiro, Maos War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
9 Li Fan, Silent Revolution, 28.
10 He Baogang, The Democratisation of China (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
11 Gordon White, Jude A. Howell, and Shang Xiaoyuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social
Change in Contemporary China, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 2937.
84
resolving all social problems, including most environmental issues. In turn, the
Chinese government always looks forward to a cooperative or even obedient
society. This perception has deeply influenced the trajectory of Chinese ENGOs.
Environmental governance and the emergence

of ENGOs in China
Given the powerful state, the emergence of ENGOs is not simply a spontaneous
reaction by Chinese society toward a worsening environment, but also, most
crucially, a reaction to central government environmental policies. One important
reason is that the new Chinese government was hesitant to recognise that the
socialist country had environmental problemsenvironmental problems were
instead viewed as an evil of capitalist institutions. Environmental issues were also
logically subordinate to other emergent national affairs, namely modernisation
and rapid industrialisation, from the GLF onwards while dissent had been
actively stamped down upon by the Chinese state since late 1950s. However,
following a number of environmental events with catastrophic consequences,
the massive modernisation movement undertaken in China has revealed major
environmental challenges.
In March 1971, for example, public health officials reported that many of
Beijings citizens were poisoned after eating some bad-smelling fish. Premier
Zhou Enlai (18981976) immediately ordered the relevant departments to
investigate. Soonit was reported that the problematic fish came from Guanting
Reservoir, one of Beijings main sources of drinking water, and had been heavily
contaminated by DDT and other toxic chemicals. The follow-up campaign to clean
up the Reservoir and some other seriously polluted water bodies from Liaoning
Province to Guangdong Province was testament to governments attempts to
manage the environment.12 With the uneasy truth of environmental problems
being revealed by this and other instances of pollution, the State Council called
the first national meeting for environmental protection in 1973. Environmental
problems were officially accepted by the central government as part of its
agenda. In an unprecedented move in the new Constitution of 1978, China
declared that government should supervise both natural resource protection
and pollution abatement. One year later, the Environmental Protection Law
of the Peoples Republic of China was promulgated by the National Peoples
Congress and in the following decades, almost 20 acts or amendments were
issued. All of these measures finally established a dominant role for government
in environmental governance in China.
12 Mao Da, An Overview of the Green Movement in China, (forthcoming paper).

85
With the Reform and Opening-up policies of the 1980s, the Chinese government
gradually welcomed ENGOs because they greatly supplemented the limited
function of government in dealing with environmental affairs. It was particularly
remarkable because resolving environmental problems demonstrated and
could be used to justify that the new government was more capable than any
previous one or social organisation in Chinese history.13 As early as 1988, the
State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), which is now the
Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), separated from the Ministry of
Urban-Rural Development to become an independent department. Soon, it
developed into approximately 3,000 environmental protection bureaus (EPBs)
at the provincial, municipal, and county levels. However, environmental
governance was still inefficient because of two reasons. One was the countrys
overwhelming focus on economic development and growth of gross domestic
product (GDP). Therefore, environmental protection was not a political
priority and environmental bureaucrats were about the least influential within
administration and among policymakers. The other reason was that Chinas
bureaucratic system was increasingly sluggish to face emerging environmental
problems. Withenvironmental problems developing in almost every province,
the complicated process of reporting, reviewing, and identifying was inefficient
and wasted money. Some of these agencies even become protecting umbrellas
for polluters and environmental criminals. Realising the shortcomings of official
institutions, some famous public figures started to advocate for the creation
of ENGOs and to disseminate ideas of environmental protection from bottom
totop.
Essentially three direct social factors promoted the emergence of ENGOs in
China. The first derived from the decentralisation reforms which encouraged a
more open atmosphere for public debate on environmental problems. In 1979,
sponsored by SEPA, but open to all professional environmental scientists, the
Chinese Society of Environmental Science (CSES) was founded in Beijing. It isa
typical caged sector of the Chinese civil society, but it created a framework
wherein the public could openly discuss and express different ideas to
authorities on environmental issues. In April 1994, the State Council declared
that government officials were no longer permitted to take a leadership role in
NGOs and that all NGOs should be registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs
as independent corporations. In 1995, only 30.4 per cent of NGOs funding
came from government. A 1998 central government document again required all
13 Chairman Mao proudly declared that bilharzia, afflicting the Southern Chinese peasants for years, was
eliminated in 1958, although the breaking out of this epidemic was partly because wet land was widely
transformed to paddy field after 1949.
86
governmental cadres to avoid leadership of NGOs and announced the cessation

of government funding for any NGO established after 1985.14 These decisions
stimulated a more independent genre of ENGOs.
A second driving force was international communication and exchange. Inthe
1980s, the Chinese government invited many environmental officials and
experts from abroad, including those from international ENGOs. The first two
organisations were the International Crane Foundation (ICF) and the World
Wildlife Fund (now World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF). Their early work in
China brought new ideas for establishing natural conservation and promoting
civil society. The first Chinese ENGO, initiated by Liu Detian, a journalist for
Panjin Daily, was directly under the influence of two experts sent by ICF and
WWF respectively. In April 1991, Liu registered the Saunders Gull (Larus
Saundersi) Conservation Society of Panjin City (SGCSP) to protect this precious
species and its habitat in Panjin region. It is the first time in my life to hear
of the word imminent danger and ecological net, Liu said, the Canadian
expert of ICF remind me Norman Bethune, the transnational work is amazing
[sic].15 WWF in later years contributed greatly to environmental protection in
China and remains one of Chinas most significant international ENGOs.
The third spark was a growing self-consciousness among specific individuals to
protect the environment because of the visible loss of natural habitat, forests,
rare species, and the degradation of arable land. For example, as early as in
1981, 17-year-old Xu Xiujuan formally dedicated her life to the protection and
cultivation of the Red-crown Crane (Grusjaponensis) in Zhalong Crane Nature
Reserve, training for a year at the Northeast Forest University. However,
Xutragically drowned in the marsh in 1987 when searching for two lost cranes.
She was quickly regarded as a hero of environmental protection and her death
inspired many other naturalists and environmentalists to follow her passion.
In a more emotional way, nature writers such as Xu Gang and Wu Dengming
(19402013) also actively aroused peoples common interest in protecting the
wild and other forms of environment through their writings. Wu also wrote
survey reports, petitioned the government, and organised young fellows to
spread the idea of environmental protection to local residents.16 All these factors
paved the way for the blossoming of ENGOs in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The case of The Friends of Nature (FON) is undoubtedly representative
of ENGOs in China in the early period of their formation. FON was formally
launched in 1994 by several famous intellectuals such as Liang Congjie
14 Hong Dayong, Shift and Continuity: The Transformation of the Chinese ENGOs [:
], Management World [] 6 (2001): 59.
15 Xu Nan, The Life of the ENGOs in China, Southern Weekend, (8 October, 2009), no page. Norman
Bethune was a doctor native in Canada who devoted his life to the Chinese medical service.
16 Mao Da, The Rise, Influence and Improvement of Environmental NGOs in China, (forthcoming paper).
87
(19322010), Yang Dongping, Liang Xiaoyan and Wang Lixiong, who were
all professionals in the humanities or sciences. Of particular note is Liangs
eminent family backgroundhis grandfather, Liang Qichao (18731929) was an
outstanding thinker and social reformer, and his parents were the most famous
architects who were in charge of designing the national flag. Liang Congjie was
worried about Chinese environmental problems from the early 1980s. When he
worked as an editor for the magazine, Encyclopedic Knowledge [Baike Zhishi], an
article on industrial pollution in the numerous township enterprises caught his
attention. Following that, Liang selected more articles on environmental issues
for his magazine. While Liang Xiaoyan, a young colleague of Liang Congjie,
initiated another magazine, The Intellectual, he more frankly committed herself
to looking for new ways to foster civil society in China and push social reform
forward. They were more or less involved in the movement clamouring for social
reform in the late 1980s, so they were courageous and sophisticated enough to
seek government support. In the mid-1990s, all NGOs were officially registered
and supervised by specific government departments. When SEPA refused to
oversee FON, Liang used his occupation and political leverage, as a member of
the National Political Consultative Conference of China, to successfully make
FON affiliated with the China Cultural Collage (a semi-independent research
institute of the time) and thereby gain it a legal identity.
The development of FONs work was never too radical because of its close
association with the state. Since it was founded, the new organisations activities
were simply limited to convening the Second Green Talkfest and organising
environmental photography exhibits.17 In November 1994, Liang was invited
by some foundations and international NGOs to the United States, where he
received the first overseas grant towards FONs future projects. In1995 and 1996
during the National Political Consultative Conference, Liang, with his colleagues,
proposed relocating Capital Steel, one of Chinas biggest heavy industrial
enterprises and a main source of Beijings air pollution, to a suburban area.
When Liang made the proposal, it was considered a challenge to government
because Capital Steel was a state-owned company and one of the main taxpayers
in Beijing. However, his proposal was finally realised in 2005 when officials
ordered Capital Steels relocation. Liang Congjie also wrote letters to Tony Blair,
the former British Prime Minister, asking for the cessation of the chiru (Tibetan
antelope, Pantholopshodgsonii) fur-trade in Britain, then its largest market. Blair
quickly replied and soon urged constraints on the trade around the world.18 All
of these cases reflected how personal interest and international communication
greatly shaped the early work of the ENGOs.
17 The first Green Talkfest was held in Beijing in 1993 before FON was established. The Talkfest had almost
50 participants, who later became FONs earliest members of FON.
18 Liang Congjie, Open Letter to Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Britain, www.grchina.com/gb/kekexili/
allwordcare-2.htm, accessed 20 July 2014.
88
Local-level ENGOs were also developing. For example, Wu Dengming, a famous

nature writer, lived in Chongqing, the second-largest city along the Yangtze
River, and turned to a more practical way to arouse public attention to the fate
of this major river of China. He established the Chongqing Green Volunteer
Association (CGV) and regularly organised volunteers to survey the river
environment and to broadcast their suggestions to local communities. At the
end of 1999, CGV organised volunteers to hike along the Yangtze River for 1,170
kilometres in 45 days. They passed through four provinces and more than 120
towns to spread the idea of environmental protection. CGV also held eight series
of training courses for more than 600 local school teachers.19 Yunnan and Guizhou
provinces were also early hotspots of local Chinese ENGOs.20 Onereason is that
these two provinces were both famous for their biodiversity and ethnic people
who lived around Chinas last remaining piece of original tropical rainforest on
its borders with Southeast Asia. Another reason is that they are not only far
from Beijing, the political center, and so have not been developed by ambitious
entrepreneurs from this region or coastal eastern China.
Chinese ENGO activities

Chinas earliest ENGOs were most successful in the least politically sensitive
area of public environmental education. With help from international NGOs
and other influential NGOs, such as the China Youth Development Foundation,
FON launched several popular environmental education projects. In May 2000,
the Antelope Van project was started and sought to protect western Chinas
fragile ecology. Inspired by the German educational idea of mobile teaching, a
cartoon image of an antelope covered the van, which was equipped with various
teaching tools and materials for outdoor environmental education. The van
could drive children to the nature reserves, enabling them to vividly encounter
and understand the natural areas to be protected through games and personal
experience. In less than a year, by April 2001, the van had visited 125schools
and brought environmental education to more than 10,000 pupils. By the end of
2002, nearly 100 media agencies, including CCTV and the National Geographic
Channel, had reported on educational drive.
19 CGV changed the public decision, www.greenu.org.cn/b_28_87_14_ news.aspx, accessed 5 November

2014. CGVs founding father, Wu Dengming, passed away in 2013.
20 For related studies, see, for example, Shu-min Huang, Lashihai: Changing environmental protection
of an Alpine lake and wetland, in Tsui-jung Liu, ed., Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary
perspectives (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014), 156168; Zhaoqing Han, Maize cultivation and its
effect on rocky desertification: A spatial study of Guizhou province (17361949), in Environmental History in
East Asia, 243258.
89
The Institute of Environment and Development (IED), founded in 1994 by

sociologist Li Lailai, also focused on environmental research and aimed at
providing reliable and practical environmental information for other social
groups and the younger generations. IED sponsored two projects committed to
playing a special role to strengthen the capacity of Chinese ENGOs. Thefirst is a
young ENGO practitioner training program, called Leadership for Environment
and Development (LEAD). Even now, many core ENGO members had experience
in LEAD. Another project sustains a computer server and provides free space
for all ENGO supporters on the internet.
ENGOs also used various other methods to enhance their appeal. For example,
in March 1996, Liao Xiaoyi and Li Hao, two long-time friends, established an
ENGO, Global Village of Beijing (GVB).21 Liao was a philosopher at the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences while Li, different from most pioneers of ENGOs
in the 1990s, was an epidemiologist with a PhD from a German university.
Herwestern scientific background and personal experience equipped Liwith
a better understanding of Chinas environmental crisis. Together, they
mainly focused on making television documentaries and promoting public
environmental awareness, such as by campaigns encouraging energy and water
savings, as well as the need to recycle. It is valuable that GVB enthusiastically
promotes environmental education and training for the left-behind children
whose parents work in cities far away from their hometowns.
Compared to environmental education, the political influence of Chinese ENGOs
developed much more slowly. One unexpected reason was the changing nature
of Chinese society in the 1990s. Since political reform was almost suspended after
1989, government prioritised economic development and it soon occupied the
central position in public debates. It meant that Chinese society, which became
politically muted in the wake of the later 1980s suppression, was less focused on
any other issues except improving personal lives. Another reason for political
weakness was rooted in ENGOs themselves. Most pioneers of national ENGOs
were intellectuals or social elites who maintained close connections with various
branches of government and so were reticent to involve themselves in sensitive
issues. These people never lacked compassion but as elites, they found it hard
to connect with grassroots sentiments. In contrast, the elites were skilful in
utilising private connections to high-ranking officials to achieve environmental
aims. Forexample, Liang Congjie was a good friend of Mou Guangfeng, a senior
official of SEPA who helped Liangs career and finally drafted a proposal to one of
the State Councillors, who pushed an official environmental doctrine by the State
Council in 1997. Requiring that all levels of government should actively support
21 Now the full name is Beijing Global Village Environmental Education Centre.
90
ENGOs activities, the doctrine was considered the first officially supportive
comment on the Chinese ENGOs in general.22 Since the very beginning, then,
circumstances have made ENGOs politically conservative.
In the early 2000s, the impact of ENGOs on government decision-making was
still not outstanding, even while media pressure and professional suggestion had
enlarged their influence. In 2000, the Lake Yangliu hydropower station project,
in Sichuan province, attracted intense media criticism. In two months, over 180
news reports criticised the project because of its potential ecological impacts.
The project was finally aborted by Zhang Xuezhong, the General Secretary
of Sichuan Province. It was the first time a big official project was suspended
through public pressure for environmental protection. One year later another
huge debate erupted after the announcement of a project to construct a series of
hydropower stations along Nujiang River (Salween River), an international river
that crosses several nations apart from China. It involved actors, such as stateowned power companies, local governments, central departments, scientific
workers, media and ENGOs, in a debate that was widely reported and which
also attracted international attention, a sensitive factor that central government
took into account when reaching its decision. The dispute was ended when
Premier Wen Jiabao suspended the project in late 2003.
In the new millennium, the transformation of the Chinese attitudes towards
life offered a great opportunity for the expansion of ENGOs and the latter
soon became the leading force for improving environmental governance.
It was widely recognised that polluted air, water, and food were threatened
everyone, including top political leaders and millionaires. With the rocketing
Chinese economy, demand for a better living environment and with it, health
quality, became hot public issues. However, Chinas environment, especially in
industrial cities and huge urban areas, was dramatically deteriorating. With the
intensifying contradictions between economic development and environmental
protection, a growing number of local ENGOs, with the help of local residents,
endeavored to attain specific environmental objectives. In five years, the total
number of ENGOs steadily grew and almost doubled beyond their number prior
to 2003.23
As Yang Guobin has argued, the emergence of the Chinese ENGO was as a result
of a combination of various forces wherein the internet played a significant
role, most notably from 2003.24 What particularly changed peoples attitudes
and their support of unfettered economic development was an unexpected
22 The Life of the ENGOs in China, Southern Weekend (8 October 2009), no page.
23 It is recorded by www.greengo.cn and www.chinadevelopmentbrief.org and tabled by Dr. Mao Da.
24 Yang Guobin, Environmental NGOs and Institutional Dynamics in China, China Quarterly 181 (2005):
47; The Co-evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China, Asian Survey 43: 3 (2003): 411412.
91
epidemic, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). To stop its rapid
spread, people avoided public places while university students, the internets
earliest users, were not even allowed to go out of campus from April to July.
Peopleconsequently relied more than ever on the internet to access the latest
news. As a contagion the likes of which had not been faced for decades,
SARS killed many medical workers and caused enormous anxieties about the
ecologicalsystem.
When it was proven that the disease derived from the civet cat (Pagumalarvata),
sometimes cooked in Guangdong Province, ENGOs quickly seized on the
opportunity to raise a public debate on rethinking the relationships between
human beings and animals. In May, the Southern Weekend, a newspaper based
in Guangdong, but popular in the whole country, carried a large report that
criticised the State Forestry Administrations (SFA) new doctrine suspending
trade in wild animals and their products in China. It was considered too
conservative, and most EGNOs argued for forbidding rather than simply
suspending wild animal consumption. The report interviewed Liang Congjie,
FONs well-known head, arguing that the best solution should be to revise the
Law of the PRC on the Protection of Wildlife. Several days later, Peoples Daily,
the largest newspaper of the Communist Party, also reported that 38 ENGOs
had jointly signed an agreement for protecting eco-diversity and anti-SARS.25
Since then, environmental protection and wildlife conservation received
unprecedented attention in public fora and the internet. In this way, ENGOs
gained widespread public attention, especially among the less educated.
Some ENGOs even became active and stable participants in helping to formulate
official policies. In the 2003 Nu Jiang River controversy, ENGOs had failed to
push for a public hearing. However, they succeeded in another environmental
controversy at the Yuanmingyuan Royal Park in 2005. The Park, located in a
Beijing suburb and since 1949, a symbol of European imperialist aggression to
China, is both a cultural and ecological heritage site. After visiting it, a Lanzhou
University professor complained about park authorities lining the parks lakes
with impermeable plastic film. Public criticism quickly followed and became a hot
issue across the country. ENGOs successfully allied with reformists within SEPA
and pushed for a public hearing. Seven ENGOs sent representatives to criticise
park authorities actions. Ultimately, the hearing overturned the findings of
the first Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report on the project. At that
time, most EIA reports in China were merely rubber stamps for such projects.
25 Peng Xiaohuaand Cong Zongliang, Dance with Media: Media Mirror of the Indigenous
Chinese ENGO with the Case Studies of the Friends of Nature [:
], Journalism and Communication [] 4 (2012): 206.
92
The Yuanmingyuan hearing changed the EIA in China. Although this should
have promoted optimism about Chinese ENGOss influence on Chinese politics,
further challenges remain.
Challenges to Chinese ENGOs

According to a report by the All-China Environment Federation (ACEF), founded
as the largest national ENGOs by SEPA in 2005, Chinese ENGOs were officially
divided into four categories. The first is sponsored by government; the second
is initiated by individuals; the third is organised by students; and the fourth
is a branch of international ENGOs in mainland China.26 This classification is
similar to Jonathan Schwartzs, which identifies three major forms of Chinese
ENGOs: (1) government organized non-governmental organization (GONGO),
(2) grass-roots-founded ENGOs, and (3) university-organised ENGOs.27 It also
reminds one of Gordon Whites classifications of Chinese NGOs.28 Except for
some GONGOs, which are logically more conservative, most Chinese ENGOs
were facing huge challenges.
The first challenge facing most ENGOs is their limited funding. According to the
latest openly accessible material, 66.7 per cent of international ENGOs received
more than 500,000 Yuan (about USD80,000), compared with 9.9 per cent for
GONGO, and 4.9 per cent among grassroots ENGOs.29 Although international
ENGOs were financially wealthier and more stable, they were normally not
allowed to collect money from Chinese citizens. According to 2008 official
reports, only 26 per cent of ENGOs had stable financial resources while in some
completely independent ENGOs (42.1 per cent of which were GONGOs and
36.8per cent were university ENGOs), 59.6 per cent of funds came from their
own members.30 However, in respect of funding models, a noticeable event was
the establishment in June 2004 of Alxa Society of Entrepreneurs and Ecological
Association (SEE). SEE, created by more than 100 Chinese entrepreneurs,
emphasised ecological health in the Alxa area of Inner Mongolia, and received
support from other ENGOs. Given its wealthy sponsors, this is an ENGO that
rarely worries about financial problems and is more flexible in its aims than
almost any other ENGO in China. Every year, the SEE foundation awards an
26 All-China Environment Federation (ACEF), The Findings Report on the Development of ENGOs in China,
2006, www.doc88.com/p-9751909379533.html, accessed 20 July 2014.
27 Jonathan Schwartz, Environmental NGOs in China: Roles and Limits, Pacific Affairs 177: 1 (2004): 28.
28 White et al., In Search of Civil Society, 2937.
29 ACEF, The Findings Report on the Development of ENGOs in China, (2006): 62.
30 ACEF, Blue Paper of Environment Protection: The Findings Report on the Development of ENGOs in
China [], 2008, wenku.baidu.com/view/dad061313968011ca30091el.html,
93
environmental prize of one million RMB. However, SEE only encourages the
most prominent environmentalists and remains the only ENGO of its type
inChina.
A second challenge is the low level of specialisation among ENGO staff. Research
in 2008 reveals that 28.9 per cent of ENGOs had no specialised staff; 46.5 per
cent, only sustained staff of fewer than five people. Some 80 per cent of branches
of Chinese international ENGOs have fewer than 20 staff and 59.7 per cent
of grassroots ENGOs had a staff of fewer than 10.31 Deficiencies in scientific
knowledge and a lack of professional guides dramatically impair ENGOs.
Forexample, in November 2005, when Songhuajiang River pollution triggered
a new wave of public concern with water pollution in China, ENGOs appeared
to be silent in the face of this human-caused environmental disaster. The public
sharply criticised ENGOs when a seminar held one month later exposed the
main reason for their silence. Wang Yongchen, leader of Green Earth Volunteers
(GEV), admitted that Chinese ENGOs did not have the capacity to get involved
in some events which required expertise in economics, ecology, chemistry,
and geology. Therefore, since 2005, more experts other than humanities and
social science specialists have initiated organisations. For example, Aurora
(PublicInformation Technology Center) was created by experts in database and
GIS (geographic information science) technology. They have helped create several
environmental databases based on specific ENGO requirements. Petroleum and
Environment Network (established in March 2005) is another very specialised
ENGO initiated by people familiar with this industry. Their projects include
information distribution, justice in the oil economy, and safety of oil and gas
shipment. While the situation improves, further cooperation is still needed
because the most competitive experts and scientists are always absorbed by
government organisations.
A third challenge is the lack of co-ordination among ENGOs. Firstly, the
geographical distribution of ENGOs is very uneven. As ACEFs report of
2005 showed, Chinese ENGOs were mainly concentrated in three regions: the
economically developed coastal region; areas along the Yangtze River; and
frontier areas like Yunnan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. According to ACEFs second
report in 2008, only Guangdong had emerged as a new ENGO area in the
three years since their earlier report. Guangdong is far away from the political
centre and enjoys a stronger tradition of civil society than other parts of China.
Considering Chinas variety of landscapes, ecosystems, and climates, some local
ENGOs prefer to pursue narrow-interest issues. Many young ENGOs leaders
are also narrowly focusing on their own careers or the interests of their small
circles, a sectarianism that either leads to unfair competition or apathy about
31 Xiao Gongqin, Civil Society and the Three Obstacles.
94
each others work.32 In addition, extreme ENGOs or deep green groups attract
a lot of criticism from the public and other ENGOs. Many disputes centre on
whether Chinese should use certain plants and animals, which are scarcely used
in other countries for medicine and food. From 2012, some animal protection
organisations have blocked the IPO attempt of Gui Zhen Tang, a medical
company which regularly extracts bile from bears. These organisations greatly
raised public consciousness of animal ethics. However, when extreme activists
stopped trucks legally carrying dogs on the express road, they were widely
criticised for their dangerous behaviour. When ENGOs interrupted the dogmeat festival in the city of Yulin, locals poured scorn on them, because of the
traditional acceptance of eating dog meat in this region.
A fourth challenge is the isolation of ENGOs from genuine grassroots movements.
Currently there are two conspicuous environmental movements successively
happening in China; respectively, resistance to government projects to build
chemical plants and rubbish incinerators. These issues belong to a wider civil
rights movement because potential victims increasingly question arbitrary
official decisions in supporting large polluting industries. For example, in
2007, in an anti-PX project demonstration in Xiamen (Amoy), in an unusual
move, Fujian province called in more than 100,000 citizens concerned about
potential environmental hazards, who appealed to remove the project from the
city. Themovement was widely noticed through the internet and similar events
happened in a series of other cities, including Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, and
Maomin, all famed for their amazing coastal environments. Accompanied by
sometimes violent confrontations between protestors and local administration,
most of these projects were finally aborted or transferred to other sites.
Following these movements, there has been a few appeals for establishing a
more transparent and institutionalised public system permitting investigation
of the environmental impacts of projects. As Zhou Zhijia observed, [c]itizen
participation in the PX movement has merely revealed a rudimentary civility,
and the functional absence of NGOs is an important element leading to
thissituation.33
Although the scale is sometimes smaller, the tactic of open resistance is more
frequently seen when it is directed against construction of rubbish incinerators.
The earliest influential case happened in Panyu, a district of Guangzhou,
in2009. Concerned with toxic chemical pollution, local residents spontaneously
appealed for the incinerators removal, finally suing the relevant administration.
One of the most recent cases took place in Yuhang, a district of the popular
32 Yu Jianfeng, An Investigation and Review of the Culture of Contemporary Chinese Environmental
Movement [], China Development Brief [] (2012): 16.
33 Zhou Zhijia, Environmental Protection, Group Pressure or Interests Relatedness?, Chinese Journal of
Sociology 31: 1 (2011): 1.
95
tourist destination, Hangzhou, in early 2014, and evolved into a large-scale riot.
In all of these cases, ENGOs were neither major organisers nor participants.
Although ENGO members contribute scientific data to judge EIA reports, all
these events are essentially genuine grassroots movements.
As noted, ENGOs are cautious to stand in opposition to the government, and
are instead content to push good governance within the existing political
system. The reason is simple: environmental events are no different from other
civil protests, whether individual or collective, which openly challenge state
authority and are easily accused of disrupting social stability. The poison
milk powder event of 2008 was unforgettable for many ENGOs, although it
dramatically aroused public concern about food security and public fury
against negligent administration. While the offending milk factory was shut
down and relevant officials were dismissed, some lawyers who insisted on
further punishment were also attacked. Therefore, although genuine grassroots
environmental movements are increasing, the influence of ENGOs on them is
still unpredictable.
Conclusion: Understanding the uniqueness

ofChinese ENGOs
The expansion of ENGOs over the past two decades has been one of the most
conspicuous phenomena in the history of Chinese civil society. The birth and
early development of Chinese ENGOs resulted from many factors: progressive
political reform of government, defects of environmental governance, worry
about environmental problems, increasing international interactions, and the
efforts of influential elites. In recent years, changes in popular environmentalism,
ENGO specialisation, the internets rise and a still-deteriorating environment
further boosted ENGO support. However, Chinese traditional culture and
political institutions are still the leading factors that shape Chinese ENGOs.
Theso-called GONGOs, ENGOs sponsored by government, are still Chinas most
powerful ENGO, although an increasing number of independent ENGOs are also
developing.
Given the Chinese political system, official attitudes towards environmental
problems always create opportunities for ENGOs. Although the 2005
Yuanmingyuan hearing was widely considered an achievement for ENGOs,
it took place against a background of SEPA demonstrating unparalleled
strictness towards EIA reports. SEPA terminated 30 building projects of power
stations that amounted to more than 117.9 billion RMD of investment earlier
96
in that year.34 In 2008, SEPA was upgraded to the Ministry of Environmental

Protection (MEP) and became more powerful. In June 2014, it fined 19 power
companies and heavy industry enterprises almost 70 million U.S. dollars.
Manyof these are state-owned companies that ENGOs have failed to challenge.35
Another case further shows how powerful the state still is in constraining civil
society. Registration of NGOs is still complicated. Although many provinces,
such as Guangdong, do not require a supervisor for newly formed NGOs,
informal methods of obstruction, including deliberate prolonging of the
application process, is commonplace. Moreover, the Chinese government is
unusually sensitive to ENGOs with an international background, so overseas
registration of ENGOs in China is still not all that open. In addition, since the
1999 US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, conservative Chinese
nationalists have dismissed Western media criticism of Chinese domestic affairs,
including environmental problems: to them, such criticism merely proves
Western prejudice towards China and jealousy of its economic boom.
One should also not forget the impact of traditional political culture. As early
as 1992, Deng Zhenglai, a famous sociologist and law researcher, suggested that
Chinese civil society should not expose a zeal for politics too early, and should
not be successors to the tradition of radical conflict between the grassroots
and government that usually ended in bloody riots. It should be very cautious
in finding a way to establish civil society from the bottom up.36 Furthermore,
Jiang Qing even asserted that China could never expect to build a civil society
like that of the Western model because Chinese culture tends toward accepting
a society with reasonable hierarchy and proper freedom for the individual.37
According to this line of argument, any development of civil society has to
take into account Confucianism. Therefore, a critical issue for ENGOs might not
be how to balance state power and civil society, but actually how to boost an
effective bureaucratic system in China.
Compared with many radical human rights ENGOs that fail even to gain any
public notice, ENGOs are very successful, since they choose a progressive
way to pursue their aims. With the popular online name Basuo Fengyun,
Luo Jianmingfamous for his leading role in online resistance to a Panyu
garbage incinerator in 2009actively promoted recycling of rubbish and
34 2005 The EPAs Storm: A Gambling should not Stop (2005: ),

TheChinese Business [], 27 February 2005, finance.sina.com.cn/g/20050227/12181387293.shtml,
35 Available at: china.haiwainet.cn/n/2014/0617/c345646-20750220.html, accessed 20 July 2014.
36 Deng Zhenglaiand Jing Yuejin, Construct Chinese Civil Society [],
Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly [] 1 (1992): 5868.
37 Jiang Qing, Confucius Culture: An Rich Resource to Construct the Chinese Model of Civil Society
[: ], Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly []
3(1992): 170175.
97
sponsored a number of ENGOs. When he was awarded the SEETNC annual

prize in 2011, he said: I did not care about politics and my neighbours until
2009 when I suddenly found government was not as arrogant as the stereotype
in my mind. One should adopt a more proactive approach to government and
look for a benign compromise with it.38
All of these cases explain the unique experience of Chinese ENGOs.
It is reasonable that Chinese ENGOs avoid involvement in street politics by
grassroots movements, and it is effective that the meritocratic ENGOs prefer
private connections to senior officials. Since environmental problems will be
serious for a long time yet in China, there is hope that civil society will have
a louder voice in the environmental movement and gain the support of more
young students. Their organisations can conveniently and easily register under
a university. Among such university ENGOs, Green Anhui, Green Longjiang,
Green Camel Bell, and The Green Environmental Advisory Centre of Chongqing
are four successful ones. Their advantage lies in stable student groups, sufficient
back-up personnel, and good connections with university scholars. This is
evident in the case of Fang Minghe, born in 1984, who founded Green Eyes
(GE) as a high-school student in 2000, and soon became the youngest leader of
any ENGO in China. These young people and their ENGOs, led with passion
and talent, may speed up the expansion of ENGOs and even Chinese politics.
However, the attitude of government towards civil society will decisively
influence the destiny of Chinas ENGOs.
Acknowledgements
I greatly appreciate Dr Mao Das sharing of two papers on this theme. He also
offered me some critical data to finish this paper. I also thank Professor Bao
Maohong for sharing a paper on the Chinese environmental movement that was
submitted to a seminar held in the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, 2012. I
especially thank the efforts of the editor.
38 Luo Jianming: We Need a Rational Mode to Negotiate with Government in Resisting Garbage Incinerator,
news.qq.com/a/20110610/000788.htm, accessed 1 October 2014.
98
Table 1: Indicative List of ENGOs Established in China, 19972002.

Area
Name
Founded
Founder
Registration Working focuses
Beijing
Centre for Legal

Assistance to
Pollution Victims
October
1998
Prof. Wang
Canfa
(environmental
law researcher)
Nonindependent
legal figure
Environmental law
and environmental
lawsuits
SouthNorth
Institute for
Sustainable
Development
1998
Environmental
and
development
researchers
Private nonenterprise
organisation
Sustainable energy
Beijing Human
1997
and Animals
Environmental
Education Centre
Animal lovers
organisation
Animal rights
Green Beijing
1998
Environmental
Volunteers
Not registered Environmental

Education
Green Web
Alliance
1999
Environmental
Volunteers

information
Green Star
2001
Volunteer Service
on Waste
Batteries
Wang Zixin
(expert on
waste battery
recycling)
Not registered Waste battery and

other household
hazardous waste
Echoing Steppe
Environmental
Volunteers
Not registered Steppe in Inner

Mongolia
Yi Wuchen
Social
organisation
Ocean environment
2000
Ocean Protection 2000

Commune
Han Hai Sha
April 2002. Volunteers of

FON and Green
Net Alliance
Social
organisation
Environmental
education and
desertification
Beijing Human
and Animal
Environmental
Centre
1997
Animal
protectors
organisation
Animal protection
and animal rights
Green Cross
December
2002
Environmental
artist
organisation
Rural community,
recycling
Tianjin
Green Friends in
Tianjin
November
2000
Environmental
volunteers
Social
organisation
Local environment
Hebei
Green Friend
Association
May 1999
Zhang Zhongmin Social

(professor of
organisation
journalism)
Environmental
education
Hengshui
Earth Daughter
Environmental
Volunteers
Association
October
2002
Environmental
volunteers
Social
organisation
Environmental
education and
recycling
Greenhome
1998
Environmental
Protection Centre
(GEPC)
Environmental
volunteers
organisation
Local environmental
improvement in the
northwest part of
Hebei
Bird Lovers
Association
of Xibaipo,
Pingshan
Bird watchers
Social
organisation
Bird protection
April 2002
99
Area
Name
Founder
Inner
Mongolia
Echo Ecology in December

Pasturing Area
2002
Research Centre
of Inner Mongolia
Social science
researcher
organisation
Natural resources
and rural community
Chifeng Desert
Green Project
Institute
March
1999
Local
researchers
organisation
Natural resources
and desertification
Shandong
Linyi
Entomological
Institute
2000
Yang Tongjie
(entomologist)
Unknown
Insects and
agricultural ecology
Henan
Green Tian
May 2002
Tian Guirong
(activist on
waste batteries)
and farmers
Social
organisation
Environmental rights
and recycling
Hubei
Green Han Jiang
2002
Yun Jianli (former Social

government
organisation
officer)
Protection of
Hanjiang River
Association
for Wetland
Conservation
May 2005
Photographers
Social
organisation
Protection of
wetlands
Green Stone
Environmental
Action Network
September University
2000
students
Enterprise
Environmental
education and
information
Friends of Green
Environment
1998
Environmental
volunteers
Social
organisation
Environmental
education and
information
Shanghai
Grass-roots
Community
2000
Grass-roots
volunteers
Social
organisation
Rural and urban

communities,
environmental
education
Zhejiang
Green Zhejiang
January
2002
School teachers
Social
organisation
Youth, environmental
education
Greeneyes China January

2000
Fang Minghe
(high school
student)
Enterprise
Youth, animal
protection,
environmental
education
Hainan
July 2001
Ecological and
Environmental
Education Centre
Environmental
volunteers

education
Jiangsu
100
Founded
Area
Name
Founded
Founder
Yunnan
Green
Watershed
2002
Environmental
researchers
organisation
Environmental
policy, water
resources
Zhaotong
Volunteers
Association to
Protect Blacknecked Cranes
December
1998
Environmental
researchers
Social
organisation
Bird protection,
environmental
education
Yunnan
EcoNetwork
January
2000
Chen Yongsong
organisation
Capacity building
and resources
conservation
Shangri-La Folk
Environment
Protection
Association
February
2002
Local residents
Social
organisation
Natural resources,
biodiversity, rural
community
Pesticide EcoAlternatives
Centre Yunnan
China
2002
Agricultural
scientists
Social
organisation
Pesticide,
environmental health
The Daba
2001
Mountains
Academy for
Biology and
Poverty Problems
Zhang Haoliang
Social
organisation
Rural community
and environment
Green Student
Organisation
Society
June 2001
University
students

education, capacity
building
Green River
November
2000
Yang Xin
(environmental
photographer)
Social
organisation
Environmental
education, animal
protection,
biodiversity
Guizhou
Guizhou PRA
1998
Ren Xiaodong
(university
researcher)
Chose to not
register
Rural community
Ningxia
Centre for the

Environment
and Poverty
Alleviation in
Ningxia
1998
Volunteers
organisation
Natural resources,
rural community,
environmental
education
Gansu
Green Camel
Volunteer
Organisation
2002
Environmental
volunteers
Unknown
Local environment
Sichuan
Source: www.greengo.cn, www.chinadevelopmentbrief.org.39
39 The table was offered by Mao Da in 2012. It lists 39 ENGOs established between 1997 and 2002, nearly
five times the number established in the six years between 1991 and 1996, and most of them are registered.
Considering the difficulties of registration, there were many more ENGOs emerging in this period.
101
HUNGRY DRAGONS:1 EXPANDING

THE HORIZONS OF CHINESE
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
CANTONESE GOLD-MINERS
IN COLONIAL NEW ZEALAND,
1860S1920S
JAMES BEATTIE
Director, Historical Research Unit
University of Waikato
Private Bag 3105
Hamilton 3240
New Zealand
jbeattie@waikato.ac.nz
Abstract
Tens of thousands of Chinese seized on the opportunities presented by British
imperialism to take advantage of resource frontiers opening up in places like Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand. Utilising British legal apparatuses and financial systems,
Chinese migrants grafted them, in varying ways, onto their own networks of expertise
and environmental knowledge drawn from China and elsewhere.
This article brings to light neglected aspects of global, British imperial, and Chinese
environmental histories. Just as Chinese environmental historians have overlooked the
environmental history of overseas Chinese, so environmental historians of British settler
colonies have likewise ignored Chinese. The article fills these historiographical gaps
by examining the environmental impacts of Cantonese gold-miners in New Zealand,
who adapted water technology from their homeland of Guangdong Province and from
elsewhere, such as in California and Victoria, Australia. In New Zealand, Cantonese
mining caused soil erosion, reduced timber supplies, displaced vegetation, and
used up scant water resources, in addition to establishing environmental exchanges
between parts of New Zealand and southern China. The article also argues that
studying the environmental impacts of overseas Chinese can present new research
on both Chinese environmental history and comparative global environmental history.
Keywords: Chinese environmental history, global environmental history, imperialism,

British Empire, Cantonese, South China, New Zealand, gold-mining, environmental
impacts, migration.
1 Tuapeka Times, 8 September 1906, 3.
103
Introduction
This article illustrates how the environmental history of overseas Chinese
might help correct an ethnocentric bias in environmental historiography of the
British Empire, especially of its settler colonies. With the exception of studies
of Chinese in tropical colonies in activities such as tin-mining or agriculture,2
environmental historians of British settler societies have largely ignored Chinese
as agents of environmental change.3 Instead, they have focused on how European
labour and capital, supported by colonial states and their legal, bureaucratic,
and military machinery, facilitated large-scale environmental transformation.
This characterisation applies to scholarship right from the seminal work of
Alfred Crosby, down to Thomas Dunlap and other more recent historians of
empiremyself included.4 It also applies to scholarship on New Zealand, case
studies from which this article examines.5
Below, I argue for the need to acknowledge the role of Chinese finance and
workers in New Zealands environmental transformation, especially in Otago.
Examining the environmental history of Chinese considerably enlarges our
picture of environmental ideas, connections, and changes in New Zealand,
by adding another groups views to those of European colonists and Mori.
Whilesome white colonists criticised Chinese miners and resented their presence
on the gold-fields, this article shows that many others admired the specialised
skills they offered, especially in building water-races, a task on which many
dozens of Chinese were employed by Europeans. Some colonists also went into
business partnerships with Chinese, engaging in enterprises that connected the
environments of southern New Zealand and south China and which triggered
environmental change in both locales.
2 Corey Ross, The Tin Frontier: Mining, Empire, and Environment in Southeast Asia, 1870s1930s,
Environmental History 19 (2014): 45479; Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, Nature and Nation: Forests and
Development in Peninsular Malaysia (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005).
3 For English-language works, see: Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History
of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Mark Elvin and Tsui-jung Liu, eds., Sediments of Time:
Environment and Society in Chinese History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Robert B. Marks,
Tigers, Rice, Silk, & Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Tsui-jung Liu (ed.), Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
(London and New York: Routledge, 2014).
4 Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 9001900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986); Thomas Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and
History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1999); James Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia
and Australasia, 18001920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
5 See Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Pawson and Brooking, 1st ed. (Auckland: Oxford
University Press, 2002); David Young, Our Islands, Ourselves: A History of Conservation in New Zealand
(Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2004); Peter Holland, Home in the Howling Wilderness: Settlers and the
Environment in Southern New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013); Paul Star, New Zealands
Biota Barons: Ecological Transformation in Colonial New Zealand, ENNZ: Environment and Nature in New
Zealand 6 (2011): 112.
104
Hungry Dragons
Highlighting these stories invites environmental historians of China to examine

the environmental impacts of Chinese overseas. As a way of accomplishing
this, the article suggests that eco-cultural networks might provide a useful
framework for considering the human, material, and environmental connections
initiated by Chinese mining. Eco-cultural networks refers to interlinked
cultural formulations, material exchanges and ecological processes stimulated
by the search for new resources, such as gold, and recognises the simultaneous
production of knowledge about environments with their exploitation under
imperial regimes. It shows how [t]he exploitation of new resources reconfigured
humannature relations, led to the mobilisation of new labour regimes,
encouraged the development of facilities enabling overseas capital investment,
and expanded communication networks and resulting knowledge exchanges,
developments which connected different places, peoples, and environments.6
This article begins with an overview of the environmental history of
New Zealand, then examines Chinese gold-miners and their environmental
actions, views, and impacts in Otago, southern New Zealand. Next, it focuses
on resource exchanges, mainly between southern New Zealand and south
China, and touches on the environmental impacts of Chinese gold-miners from
NewZealand returning to China. Finally, the work reflects on how an examination
of the environmental history of overseas Chinese might help reconfigure Chinas
environmental history. Given the authors existing work and the limitations
of space, the present study only briefly discusses Chinese commercial market
gardening, Chinese landscape views, and the impacts of returning Chinese in
the Pearl River region.7
New Zealand environmental transformation,

13001920s
New Zealand formally became part of the British Empire in 1840 after the
Treaty of Waitangi was signed by many Mori chiefs and the British Crown.
This treaty followed several decades of interaction among Mori, Europeans,
and other groups. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, New Zealand, its
resources, and wider environment gradually become incorporated into world
markets. Vessels sought New Zealand spars, sealskins, and later whale products
6 Beattie, Melillo, and OGorman, Eco-Cultural Networks and the British Empire, in Eco-Cultural Networks
and the British Empire, 89. See, also: Beattie, OGorman, and Melillo, Rethinking the British Empire through
Eco-Cultural Networks: Materialist-Cultural Environmental History, Relational Connections and Agency,
Environment & History 20 (2014): 56175.
7 Beattie, Eco-cultural networks.
105
for international markets.8 China was New Zealands first major export market,
and remained significant for over 30 years. Sealskins collected from southern
NewZealand were commonly sent via ports in Australia to Canton, where they
were in high demand for the making of fur coats for officials. For instance, in
1792 a small vessel visiting New Zealand sent 4,500 skins to Chinathis only
hinted at the much larger volume of traffic that was to follow, a traffic largely
controlled by Americans and carried by their vessels. By the 1830s, however,
not only were most sealing colonies in precipitous decline, but also oversupply
led to a massive drop in profitsfactors which contributed to its end.9 The
gradual incorporation into world markets evidenced by the sealskin trade
accelerated markedly with colonisation, and was participated in by Mori as
well as European.10
New Zealands formal colonisation signalled a shift from temporary European
residenceoften solely for purposes of resource extractionto permanent
European settlement. From 1861 to 1900, New Zealand received 223,000
migrants.11 Colonists ongoing desire for land, coupled with their seemingly
limitless numbers, caused major ecological impacts in New Zealand, and had
devastating cultural and health effects on Mori. Although for a time Mori also
participated successfully in an overseas export economy, they endured major
land losses from the 1850s. Environmental change accelerated as the shadow of
the land passed from Mori to colonisers.12
8 Jim McAloon, Resource frontiers, settler capitalism and environmental change 17701860, in
Environmental Histories of New Zealand, 1st ed., 5268; C. J. Elder and M. F. Green, New Zealand and China,
in New Zealand and China: the papers of the twenty-first Foreign Policy School 1986, ed. Ann Trotter (Dunedin:
University of Otago, 1986), 1663.
9 William Tai Yuen, The Origins of Chinas Awareness of New Zealand, 16741911 (Auckland: New Zealand
Asia Institute, The University of Auckland, 2005), 93109; Ian W. G. Smith,The New Zealand Sealing Industry
(Wellington: Department of Conservation, 2002).
10 McAloon, Resource frontiers; Beattie, Plants, Animals and Environmental Transformation: Indian /
New Zealand biological and landscape connections, 1830s1890s, in East India Companies and the Natural
World 16001850, ed. Vinita Damoradaran and Anna Winterbottom (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014),
219248; Beattie, Thomas McDonnells Opium: Circulating Plants, Patronage and Power in Britain, China
and New Zealand, 1830s1850s, in The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century (Dumbarton Oaks,
forthcoming).
11 Donald Denoon and Philippa Mein-Smith with Marivic Wyndham, A History of Australia, New Zealand
and the Pacific (Oxford and Malden: Blackwell, 2000), 8788.
12 Richard Boast, Buying the land, selling the land: governments and Mori land in the North Island (Wellington:
Victoria University Press, 2008); David V. Williams, Te kooti tango whenua: The Native Land Court 18641909
(Wellington: Huia, 1999); Harry C. Evison, The Long Dispute: Maori Land Rights and European Colonisation in
Southern New Zealand (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1998).
106
Hungry Dragons
The particular nature and extent of that passing reflected not just the colonising
ideals of incoming Europeans, but also New Zealands very particular ecology.
On their arrival around 1300 CE, Polynesians found the three large islands
teeming with birds and insects, but virtually no mammals. They named it
Aotearoa, meaning Land of the Long White Cloud. Mori introduced a handful
of animals and tropical staples they brought from Polynesia. Thanks to their
horticultural skills, they were able to grow several tropical varieties in the cooler
and more temperate climate of New Zealand, but even their skills were unable
to successfully nurture a great range of introduced Polynesian food crops in
Murihuku, southern New Zealand. Mori also had a significant environmental
impact on the plant and bird life of Aotearoa, driving some species to extinction
and deforesting large swathes of the main islands eastern coasts.13
New Zealands environmental transformation stepped up several gears following
British colonisation, through introductions of more people, technology, and
by opening it up to global markets. Mori also participated in aspects of this
transformation. An estimated 30,000 species of introduced plants came following
colonisation. Included among them were many undesirable introductions,
whose ecological consequences were unanticipated and sometimes devastating.
Following colonisation, introduced pasture replaced forests and swamps. And
hoofed animalssheep, horses, and cattlewere introduced into the islands
for the first time, in addition to a host of other animals, and birds.14 The area of
native forest fell from around 80 per cent of the land-mass when Polynesians
first arrived, to 50 per cent on the eve of European colonisation. By 1900, it was
25 per cent (Map 1 and Map 2).15 The extent of pastureland increased markedly
(Figure 1) along with numbers of domestic livestock. Following colonisation,
New Zealand lost approximately 85 to 90 per cent of its wetlands. In places, native
plants and bird life declined precipitously, some to the point of extinction.16
13 Matt McGlone, The Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand in Relation to Environmental and Biotic
Changes, New Zealand Journal of Ecology 12 (1989): 11529; Te Taiao Mori and the Natural World [ed.
Jennifer Garlick, Basil Keane, and Tracey Borgfeldt] (Auckland: David Bateman, 2010).
14 Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson, Seeds of Empire: The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand
(London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).
15 Michael Roche, The State as Conservationist, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, 1st ed., 185.
16 For an overview of these changes, see Making a New Land, ed. Pawson and Brooking. Figure of loss of
wetlands from: Geoff Park, Swamps which might doubtless easily be drained: swamp drainage and its impact
on the indigenous, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, 1st ed., 150.
107
Map 1: New Zealand vegetation and land use, 1840.

Source: Based on: Kenneth B. Cumberland, A Centurys Change: Natural to Cultural Vegetation in New
Zealand, Geographical Review 31, no. 4 (October 1941): n. p.
Cycles of boom and bust dominated the colonial economy. Primary products
sustained booming economies for a time, only to slump when overseas demand
slackened off, or when a resource faced exhaustion. Wool production, and
by the end of the nineteenth century, frozen meat and dairy products, drove
environmental transformation and oiled the workings of colonial economies.
This was accompanied by other forms of resource exploitation, including
oftimber, kauri gum, and gold.17
17 See Seeds of Empire; McAloon, Resource Frontiers.

108
Hungry Dragons
Map 2: New Zealand vegetation and land use, 1940.

Source: Based on: Kenneth B. Cumberland, A Centurys Change: Natural to Cultural Vegetation in
NewZealand, Geographical Review 31, no. 4 (October 1941): n. p.
Traditionally this rapid and remarkably widespread environmental

transformation has been depicted as something undertaken largely by white
settlers, mostly from Britainscholars are yet to adequately assess the impacts
undertaken by Mori following colonisation. Yet, as this article demonstrates,
from the 1860s Chinese also were responsible for considerable environmental
changes in the islands, particularly in southern New Zealand. Chinese goldminers diverted rivers, washed away hillsides, and, through their actions,
caused deforestation and soil erosion. Chinese market gardeners introduced
new plants into New Zealand, converted barren into productive land, and
eventually supplied most settler towns with the bulk of their vegetables by
the late nineteenth century. Chinese farm workers aided in the introduction
of European pastures and animals and, as railway labourers, helped to develop
109
new bridgeheads of resource extraction. Through their access to capital, a few

high earners who invested their profits in New Zealandsuch as the merchants
Choie Sew Hoy, Chew Chong, Chin Moon-Ting (James Chin Ting), and Chan Dah
Cheealso helped to develop new industries or introduce new technologies
that opened up new frontiers of resource exploitation with often significant
environmental impacts.
Figure 1: Thousands of acres of sown grass by year.

Source: Sown Grass, in Agricultural and Pastoral Statistics of New Zealand: 18611954, compiled
byB. L. Evans (Wellington: Department of Statistics, 1956), A25.
Chinese come to New Zealand: Gold-mining

From 1852 to 1876, New Zealands semi-federalist provincial system of
government gave provinces considerable powers and responsibilities, including
over migration, for developing transport networks, and the like. In 1865, with
men drifting away from the Otago gold-fields (opened in 1861), concerned
provincial authorities invited Cantonese gold-miners in Australia to Otago
(Map 3). Most settlers initially welcomed Chinese as hard-working men able
to keep out of trouble and likely to return to China once they had made their
money. Figure2 summarises the patterns of Chinese immigration.
110
Hungry Dragons
Map 3: Map of Otago Gold-fields.

Source: Henry Aitken Wise, Wises new map of Otago: corrected from official surveys January, 1875
(Dunedin: H. Wise & Co., 1875), in Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, NZ Map 6533.
Figure 2: Chinese arrivals into, and Departures from, New Zealand,

18671941.
The gaps in the graph indicate gaps in sources. The table shows a stream of departures, which is typical
of Cantonese sojournerism, but also points to a practice of chain migration that was not anticipated in
the invitations to the Chinese to come, and which enabled the Cantonese to continue accruing capital
to take home.
Source: Drawn from information supplied in Table 6Chinese Departures and Arrivals in Otago, in James
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past , vol. 1 (Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1993), 348.
111
Most arrivals in the 1860s came from the Australian colony of Victoria, mostly
from Siyi (Four Districts, south-west of the city of Canton) and to a lesser extent
Sanyi (Three Districts, closer to Canton). By the 1870s, miners came directly
from China, especially from the Three Districts (mainly Panyu, north of Canton),
and this group predominated among Chinese in New Zealand.18 The ongoing
dominance of Panyu men in the Colony from the 1870s is shown in the following
figures for 1896: in that year, 67 per cent of Chinese in New Zealand came from
Panyu; 17 per cent, Siyi; 2.5 per cent, Zengcheng; 3.5 per cent, Zhongshan (then
Huengshan); 2 per cent, Dungguan. Only one man came from Fujian Province.19
In reaching New Zealandwhich Chinese called New Gold Mountain (Sun Gum
Shan in Cantonese, Xin jinshan in Pinyin, ) to distinguish it from North
America (Gold Mountain, )and then in proceeding to the goldfields,
the Cantonese drew from their own extensive migrant networks. In places
like New Zealand, they also made extensive and effective use of colonial
financial systems and legal structures, including government policies making
available land and other resources. In New Zealand, as elsewhere, nineteenthcentury Chinese migrants from the Pearl River Delta actively pursued the
opportunities offered by the ever-quickening spread of capitalism in the form of
thickening webs of international trade, steadily improving transportation and
communications technology, and the job opportunities in colonial economies
throughout the world.20
Just as lineage networks tied together family and clan in China, so these
structuresplus county groupings and native-place associationsoperated
beyond Chinas territorial boundaries. These networks provided financial,
organisational, and emotional support to overseas Chinese, facilitating
everything from travel and accommodation to the carrying of letters and
remittance money. Such associations shaped Cantonese work patterns and even
movements in NewZealand.
Otago officials initially approached Victorian-based Chinese merchants
important interlocutors bridging the linguistic and cultural worlds of the
Chinese and colonialto see whether they would be interested in organising
their kinsmen to work in Otago. As a result, mainly Siyi and Sanyi Chinese
arrived. Siyi Chinese travelled inland on a route north of Dunedin, while Sanyi
Cantonese travelled on a route south of Dunedin. Cantonese in New Zealand
also worked mining claims along clan and county lines, just as they later
operated market gardens and set up fruit and vegetable shops using these social
18 James Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past: How the Cantonese goldseekers [sic] and their heirs settled in New
Zealand, vol. 1 (Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1993).
19 Ng, Windows, 1:11.
20 Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the
United States and South China, 18821943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 2.
112
Hungry Dragons
networks.21 For example, in the nineteenth century, miners mostly from Panyu
worked the gold-field of Round Hill, Otago. As market gardeners, Panyu men
also predominated in the smaller North Island centres of Palmerston North
and Wanganuiand in the South Island, in the Dunedin suburb of Kaikorai
Valley. In contrast, by the early 1900s, many of Dunedins market gardeners
and most of Wellingtons 140 fruit sellerscame from Zengcheng County.22
In environmental terms, these networks facilitated introductions into New
Zealand of Chinese vegetables, flowers, and agricultural techniques, transfers
kept up by ongoing exchanges of people and information.23
The mobility of Chinese is illustrated in the biographies of the some 3,500 Chinese
in Otago collected by the Reverend Alexander Don (18571934).24 I use the term
trans-local to describe the connections Chinese migration established, because,
rather than operating at a national level, they functioned at a fundamentally
local level (Map 4). This is illustrated in the potted biography of an unnamed
Cantonese gold-miner, recorded in 1882, who part-owned a large mine in Round
Hill. After three years in Singapore, the miner spent a further 15 in Mauritius
before moving to New Zealand. When Don caught up with him, he had been
in New Zealand twelve years. He speaks a little French, picked up at Mauritius,
but like the English spoken by Chinese, it is a pidgin.25
It was well known for Cantonese to travel from one Jin Shan country to another
and among various centres of Chinese population in New Gold Mountain.
Brothers or kin commonly joined family or friends in working mining claims,
just as later they joined market-gardening or laundry businesses. Overseas
Chinese tried to return home every few years for family reasons, including to
get married, but only a very few brought Chinese women to New Zealand, while
a handful married European women. Obviously, the ideal for the gold-miner
would be to strike it lucky, and return home rich. But, for most, this never
happened, and for those who struggled to make a living in New Gold Mountain,
it appears that connections with their home gradually dissipated, owing to the
21 Ng, Windows, 1:11. On such migrant networks in a broader context, see Adam McKeown, Chinese
Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii, 19001936, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2001); McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders
(NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2008); McKeown, Conceptualising Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949,
in The Chinese Diaspora in the Pacific, ed. Anthony Reid (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 132.
22 George McNeur, Feeling the Way in the Canton Villages (Dunedin: Otago Daily Times, 1902), 2.
23 On which, see Beattie, Empire of the Rhododendron.
24 This is reproduced fully in James Ng, Dons Roll of Chinese, Windows on a Chinese Past, vol. 4 (Dunedin:
Otago Heritage Books, 1993).
25 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 July 1882, 7.
113
shame of not having earned enough to send money back to family in China or
even to permit their return home.26 A lack of understanding among families in
Canton of the hardships faced by their kin compounded problems.27
Map 4: The place of origin and rough route taken by Cantonese to

southern New Zealand.
Source: Drawn from information supplied in primary source accounts of nineteenth-century Chinese
migration.
Gold-mining: Moving mountains and rivers

In the nineteenth century, most Chinese coming to New Zealand first arrived
in Otago, even if they later moved into other areas. Otagos Chinese population
peaked in 1871, at 3,715,28 while New Zealands Chinese population reached an
officially recorded highpoint of 5,004 in 1881a figure only surpassed after
the Second World War. Historian James Ng, however, believes that, due to
permanent departures and deaths, more Chinese came to New Zealand than
censuses recordedin fact, he believes as many as 8,000 Chinese may well have
passed through New Zealand.29
26 See, for example, the following letter: Labelled in pencil, Chau Pak Cheung to [unidentified], 29 July
1889 in GAO/14, Canton Villages MissionStaff FilesRev GH McNeur, 19161919, 1984/0018, Presybterian
Archives of Aotearoa New Zealand. Translated by Sylvia Yuan.
27 Ng, Windows, vols. 14.
28 Select Committee, 1871, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 23.
29 Ng, The Sojourner Experience, in Unfolding History, Evolving Identity, ed. Manying Ip (Auckland:
Auckland University Press, 2003), 14.
114
Hungry Dragons
The Chinese worked in all of Otagos gold-fields, often on second-quality

claims. And although they were in a minority as a whole in Otago, they came
to dominate some fields for a time, such as Round Hill. Figure 3 outlines the
changing character of the Chinese and European mining population. In 1871,
for instance, Chinese constituted 25 per cent of Tuapekas mining population.
Although European and Chinese miners sometimes worked together, this was
generally the exception rather than the norm. Most Chinese worked small
claims of around two-to-five acres (0.8 to 2 hectares) in extent, involving
anything from three-to-eight individuals, usually operating in clan and county
groups. On these, the Chinese earned a reputation for methodically reworking
abandoned European claims. Not only did Europeans keep the better claims, but
the price of licences for better gold-yielding land was beyond the means of most
Chinese.30 For this reason, nearly all the Chinese were alluvial miners. Otago
quartz reefs were few and too costly to operate (Table 1).
Figure 3: Otagos European and Chinese gold-mining population, 18711902.

Source: Drawn from information supplied in Table 1Number of Chinese Goldminers in Otago, in Ng,
Windows, 1:156.
Table 1: Numbers of Chinese and European miners involved in Alluvial and

Quartz Mining in Otago, March 1877March 1878.
Alluvial Miners
Quartz Miners
European
Chinese
European
Chinese
3280
2585
435
35
Source: Table 9, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), H4, 1878, 35.
30 Neville Ritchie, Archaeology and History of the Chinese in Southern New Zealand During the Nineteenth
Century: A Study of Acculturation, Adaptation and Change (PhD diss., University of Otago, 1986), 5356.
115
Harnessing water was essential to gold-mining, but this resource was in

especially short supply in Central Otago, where in some areas rainfall averaged
as little as 500 millimetres a year. In summer, streams frequently ran dry, while
in winter, water was locked up as iceadded to which, in winter, it was usually
too cold to mine in the higher country. Other challenges arose from the paucity
of wood in the largely treeless Central Otago and the regions rugged topography
of ranges and basins. Unsurprisingly, two constant refrains in the mining
newspapers were a lack of water and climatic extremes slowing, or entirely
halting, miningactivities.
Water-races were thus vital to mining. Water permitted sluicing and the removal
of mining sludge; served as a source of drinking water; and, later, provided
irrigation for horticulture and agriculture. Cantonese came from a culture
steeped in thousands of years of experience in controlling water, albeit in a
sub-tropical environment.31 Despite climatic differences, the Chinese who came
from Victoria to Otago, sometimes first via California, had become accustomed to
building water-races in Gold Mountain and New Gold Mountain environments
where water was scarce.32 Some, like Choie Sew Hoy, came to Victoria and Otago
with prior experience of Californias extensive waterworks, and transferred
or adapted technology from one field to another (see below).33 The technology
brought by Chinese into New Zealand included, for example, the Californian
Pump. According to Christopher Davey, this resembled the Chinese Pump,
but instead of a belt had slats and pins.34 New Zealand historian of mining
technology Nic MacArthur, in contrast, states that the wooden-paddled chainpump was known as the Chinese Pump in California, but the Californian Pump
in Australia and New Zealand.35
Whatever was the case, Chinese and Europeans made use of technology
originating in California and Victoriaincluding hydraulic sluicing and
hydraulic elevating. The latterthe process of forcing gold-bearing gravel
upwards using high-pressure wateroriginated in California, and was
extensively undertaken in New Zealand, including by Choie Sew Hoy and his
son, Choie Kum Poy (see below).36 In New Zealand, Cantonese miners, like their
European counterparts, also utilised wing dams, either built of wood or stone,
31 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, & Silt.
32 On Chinese miners in Australia, see: Sheng, Environmental Experiences, 11519; Michael MacLellan
Tracey, No WaterNo GoldApplied hydrology in nineteenth century gold mining, in Proceedings of
the Australian Mining History Association 1996 Conference, ed. Ruth Kerr and Michael MacLellan Tracey
(Canberra: Home Planet Design and Publishing, 1997), www.heritagearchaeology.com.au/Water.htm, accessed
21 February 2014,.
33 For the biographies of other Cantonese who had been in California, see, for example: Alexander Don,
TheEvangelist 3, no. 9 (1 September 1871): 264; Alexander Don, The Evangelist 4, no. 9 (2 September 1872): 274.
34 Christopher Davey, The Origins of Victorian Mining Technology, 18511900, The Artefact 19 (1996): 54.
35 Nicol Allan MacArthur, Gold Rush and Gold Mining: A Technological Analysis of Gabriels Gully and
the Blue Spur, 18611891 (M.A. diss.: University of Otago, 2014), 39.
36 See, Andrew C. Isenberg, Mining California: An Ecological History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 2351.
116
Hungry Dragons
or of both materials. Wing dams diverted a rivers flow either against a bank so
it could be broken down and worked, or dewatered one side of a creek bed so
that the other side could be dry-worked.37 European and Chinese utilised the
so-called Chinese Pump to accomplish this task as well. To my knowledge, no
examples survive of this technology, save for a handful of images, including
one of the first photographs of the Otago gold rush, of its use by Europeans, in
Gabriels Gully in 1862. The only one I am aware of depicting Cantonese in New
Zealand using a Chinese Pump is Photo 1. In Nic MacArthurs opinion, the
Chinese pump is the device in the far left centre of the image and we are looking
at it end-on. It is being driven by a small waterwheel as shown by the small
white race of water flowing from above it.38
Photo 1: A very rare photograph showing Cantonese miners utilising

a Chinese Pump. This is on the far left, in the centre of the image and
isbeing driven by a small waterwheel.
Source: From: Herbert Deveril, 18401911: Chinese Gold Miners by the Side of the Tokomairiro River,
Otago. Ref: PA7-46-19. Reproduced with permission from the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington,
New Zealand.
In addition to this technology, water-races were essential to sluicing, while the

more complex forms of hydraulic sluicing required a significant head of water
to operate. A measure of the tenacity and difficulty involved in constructing
a water-race comes from a description in 1870, originally reported in the Lake
Wakatipu Mail, of a party of some 20 to 30 Chinese endeavouring to bring
37 Ritchie, Archaeology and History of the Chinese, 60.
38 I am indebted to Nic MacArthur for this information. The first image of Gabriels Gully can be found at:
F. A. Coxhead, Gabriels Gully, 1862, in Hocken Collections Te Uare Taoka Hkena, file name: 1309_01_014A,
scan number: S07-242c S10-175a.
117
to light the hidden treasures of the Arrowtown Flat, on the Wakatipu goldfield. They deserve every credit for the enterprising manner in which they have
again set in to work the ground, wrote the correspondent.
Undaunted by the complete destruction of all of their works, the party again
tackled the undertaking, but on an entirely different principle. Instead of having
an open tail-race, liable to be filled up by almost any fresh [rush of water] which
may occur, they are now bringing in one which no flood can affect. As theraceis
being cut, they are covering it in with large slabs of stone[;] this is again laid
over with layers of grass and fern, and finally a deep and firm coating of earth
over all. As theraceis being cut in the bed-rock, and is already some hundreds
of feet long, an idea may be formed of the labour and perseverance necessary to
complete the work[.]
The writer ended by hoping their efforts will meet with the measure of success
[which] they richly deserve.39
Another measure of European esteem for Chinese water management was
European employment of Chinese labourers, usually under Chinese contractors,
to build water-races. For example, many Chinese were employed in constructing
the 108-kilometre-long Mt. Ida Water Race in Central Otago, on the Mt. Ida Gold
Field.40 Europeans and Chinese also sometimes went into business together, as
on the Port Water Race, on Round Hill Gold Field. Chinese contractors under
Wy Kee laboured 14 months on this 22 kilometre water-race that snaked its
way from George Creek, Longwood, to Round Hill (Map 5). Operated by a
partnership of Wy Kee and Henry H. Port, the race (Photo 2) passed through
heavy bush, containing much rata or iron wood. A considerable portion of it
traversed rocky ground, necessitating the use of dynamite. On its completion
in 1889, the race was the largest in this district, being nearly 4ft wide on top,
3ft at bottom, and 2ft. 8in deep. At this, Wy Kee gave a banquet in honour of
the event. Some 250 persons, including Europeans, were present, and from
the hearty manner in which they partook of the hospitable spread served with
no stinted hand one was convinced that those present did not seem to hold any
anti-Chinese feelings towards Mr Wy Kee.41
This celebration is perhaps surprising, given the developing anti-Chinese
sentiment evident on Round Hill. Part of the reason for such animosity was that,
as a newspaper noted in 1900, things were entirely in the hands of the Chinese:
stores, hotel, mission church, water races, claims, and mining rights being
principally controlled by themalthough, it should be noted, too, that most
of the key water rights still belonged to Europeans.42 In the decade between the
39 Otago Witness, 15 October 1870, 11.
41 Otago Witness, 18 April 1889, 12. Southland Province existed from 1861 until 1870, when, owing to
financial difficulties, it once again became part of Otago Province.
42 Otago Witness, 31 May 1900, 20.
118
Hungry Dragons
completion of Ports Water Race and 1900, control of water on Round Hill, and
with it oversight of mining operations, shifted into European hands, largely due
to the establishment of the European-owned Round Hill Mining Company, even
if some Chinese might also have worked for this operation.43
Map 5: Sketch map of Round Hill, showing the many claims owned by the
Chinese, the location of the township of Canton (on the corduroy track
going in the direction SSE to NNE), as well as the Ourawera Stream and
Stony Creek.
Note the orientation of Canton on this map is taken to be NNE.
Source: Dons 1881 Diary, folio 9 (recto), private collection, reproduced with permission of owner.
43 On which, see Ng, Windows, 2:97135. Also, D. Hamilton, Early Water Races in Central Otago (paper
presented at the 3rd Australasian Engineering Heritage Conference, Otago, Dunedin, November 2225, 2009),
www.ipenz.org.nz/heritage/conference/papers/Hamilton_D.pdf, accessed 18 February 2014.
119
Photo 2: Ports Race [Ourewera Goldmining Co. Ltd?].

Source: Round Hill, Goldmining, Hocken Library / Uare Taoko o Hkena, University of Otago, Dunedin,
c/nE2086/29.
Moving Mountains and Rivers: Minings

environmental impacts, 1870s1880s
I have deliberately characterised this section and period Moving mountains
and rivers, because these landforms and waterways were moving in two senses
of the word: Chinese miners were literally shifting mountains of earth and
realigning waterways at the same time as such landscapes were moving some
Chinese to debate the nature of the environmental changes they were making.
As adduced in the discussion of the construction of water-races, gold-mining had
far-reaching environmental impactson soil, geology, water, and vegetation.44
At Round Hill in 1882, Don was forcibly struck with the change which man
brings about when he puts his hand on plastic Nature. Once, no doubt, the
120
44 Randall Rohe, Minings Impact on the Land, in Green Versus Gold: Sources in Californian environmental
history, ed. Carolyn Merchant (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998), 12535.
Hungry Dragons
valley of Stony Creek was as beautiful as any of its neighbours with its mossy
banks and graceful fern[-]trees; now it is a chaos of boulders, upturned trees,
and sludge.45
Such a description is borne out by photographs of the area at the time. Photo 2,
of Ports water-race, incidentally depicts the deforestation and sludge resulting
from sluicing (in the background of the image is the aqueduct bringing water
into the gold-field). Images of the town of Canton, at Round Hill (Photo 3) also
illustrate sluicings environmental effects, most notably in creating a large ridge,
on which the Chinese settlement precariously sits.
Photo 3: Canton, Round Hill, 10 January 1903.

The village consists of about thirty Chinese buildings, including huts, stores and opium smoking and
gambling-houses. The largest house, and the only two-storied one, is a tea shop or restaurant, and
belongs to a Riverton firm.46
Source: Canton, Icabod, Round Hill Goldmining, 1903, Hocken Library / Uare Taoko o Hkena,
University of Otago, Dunedin, c/nE2407/16.
Round Hill was an exception among Otagos gold-fields in having plentiful wood
supplies, as a result of its location in Longwood Forest. Although the trees of
Longwood Forest provided building material and fuel vital to the gold-mining
industry, they also impeded mining, and threatened life and limb. The winning
of gold necessitated deforestation to enable miners to get at the precious ore
underneath, while the timber also provided fuel and building material. For
example, in 1882, Don testily noted in his diary, Round Hill Chinese busy
cutting timber on the Sabbath,47 while the Southland Times in 1888 recorded
Chinese employing Europeans to cut and sledge firewood.48 But mining in such
47 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 October 1882, 67.
48 Southland Times, 26 July 1888, 3.
121
a forested area created its own hazards. On 1 December 1883, Don records a
17-year-old Chinese miner, killed while felling a treesadly only one of several
such fatalities resulting from similar ventures.49
The other gold-fields of Otago were characterised by a scarcity of a commodity
vital to gold-mining, as an 1869 newspaper described:
In every branch of the pursuit [of gold-mining]and there are manytimber is
an essential requisite. Deep leads cannot be reached except by means of shafts
and drives heavily slabbed [sic] with timber from the surface downwards; [gold]
dredges are constructed of timber; the races which convey water for many miles
are connected by means of fluming made of timber; quartz reefing could not be
carried on, nor could bank sluicing, hill sluicing, or ground sluicing be made to
pay, without the assistance of wooden appliances.50
Firewood also warmed miners during Otagos cold and long winters.51
On all of the gold-fields except for Round Hill, then, mining ran into problems
because of Otagos relatively scant timber resources.52 Centuries before European
arrival, Mori had removed much of the forest of the east coast of the South
Island (Map 1). This meant that miners in the Maniototo (Mt. Ida Gold Field)
had to rely on timber milled at Hawkesbury Bush, north of Dunedin. Miners
in the valley of the Clutha, Manuherikia, and the Dunstan, have to depend
upon the supply brought from Tapanui, while those in the upper valley of
the Clutha, at Cromwell, Nevis, Arrow, and the Shotover, have to depend
upon the Earnscleugh bush at the very head of Lake Wakatipu.53 Baltic, North
American, and Australian timbers were also imported for mining, and this trade
is representative of how Chinese miners, like their European counterparts,
contributed to creating timber demand in other parts of Otagoand the rest of
the worldthrough gold-mining.
If forests and vegetation were removed for mining, then sluicing itself altered
watercourses and polluted waterways. As on other gold-fields around the world,
hydraulic sluicing in New Zealand considerably accelerated environmental
change by enabling a few miners to accomplish in weeks what formerly
49 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 December 1883, 106. Note also,
another death: Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 January 1884, 124.
50 Otago Witness, 18 September 1869, 2.
51 Otago holds the record for the coldest and hottest temperatures recorded in New Zealand. On its climate
extremes, see Julian Kuzma, The 1895 Snowstorm, ENNZ: Environment and Nature in New Zealand 9, no.
1 (2014): 79103; Climate, Science, and Colonization: Histories from Australia and New Zealand, ed. Beattie,
OGorman and Matt Henry (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
52 See Neil Clayton, Settlers, politicians and scientists: Environmental anxiety in a New Zealand colony,
ENNZ: Environment and Nature in New Zealand 9, no. 1 (2014): 2021, 2939.
53 Otago Witness, 18 September 1869, 2.
122
Hungry Dragons
required a hundred men months to do.54 For example, at Waikaia (then known
as Switzers), on the Nokomai Gold Field, Central Otago, Sue Ting managed the
Argyle Water Race Co., which had been bought from Europeans. In 1885, with
great technical skill and at no small expense, Chinese extended it considerably
into an adjacent gully at the cost of 1,500.55 This necessitated diverting a creek
from 21 kilometres away, and piping it cross a deep gully. In increasing and
establishing a permanent water supply, 16 Chinese miners:
are now at work washing away a wholehill.Once thewaterhas been brought to
the ground and a tailraceprovided for its escape downwards, the work is easy.
A long canvas hose comes over the face. Thewaterdischarged from the nozzle
quickly eats away deep incisions below. The top ground falls down, and the
whole lot is speedily washed down therace,the gold being caught in the various
places provided for its reception. Just as we were watching the operations at
one of the faces of the Argyle claim a fall came thundering down, containing
probably a hundred cart loads of stuff, but this is nothing to what can be done,
seeing that the faces are as much as 75 feet deep, and that the ground is simply
drift without much cohesion.56
The Argyle Claim exhibited another ingenious [Chinese] contrivance unfamiliar

to European observers: this was the placement of boxes, about two feet wide,
[a]t intervals down the hill, and in a regular series of gradations. They were
covered with blanketing, over which the miners had placed a series of flexible
transverse iron bars. As the correspondent for the Mataura Ensign explained:
The agitation of the material passing over these keeps them constantly vibrating,
and the stuff below is thus not allowed to set, but is what is technically called
kept alive.57 Like Round Hill, this area was worked primarily by men from Panyu
and exhibited the environmental effects of removing hillsides. Theseincluded
the removal of large volumes of topsoil and rocks, changes to river channels,
and siltation of areas downstream.
Round Hill Chinese undertook significant sluicing and tunnelling, but, as
noted, from about 1890, European interests, backed by greater capital enabling
operations much larger in scale, increasingly took over the gold-field. In 1882,
the Otago Witness noted how, through sluicing, a large amount of ground is
worked by the Chinamen by tunnelling out the washdirt, and washing it in
whatever drainage water they can get hold of. The bulk of the sludge goes
down the Orawera [sic] Creek to Whakapatu Bay, the rest into Lake George
54 Rohe, Minings Impact on the Land, 130.

55 Ng, Windows, 1:175, footnote 184c.
56 Mataura Ensign, 24 January 1888, 4.
57 Mataura Ensign, 24 January 1888, 4.
123
(Figure2). As a result of mining, [t]he whole of the Orawera [sic] flat is sludged
up, and the creek itself has disappeared, there being only about [a] 50 feet fall
in fourmiles.58
Both Lake George/Uruwera and Whakapatu Bay suffered from the effects of
pollution, the more so since miners also used quicksilver (mercury). In 1882,
a reporter for the Otago Witness regretted minings effects on Lake George,
apretty piece ofwater [whose] surface is generally dotted with black swan
and wild duck. It seems a pity, observed the author, that this lake should be
destroyed [by this means], but I am afraid it is inevitable.59 Despite the authors
fears, in 1888, another Otago Witness reporter noted that the primeval forest
that embosomed the 91-hectare lake will soon, alas ... be the prey of the
woodmans ruthless axe, indicating perhaps that the decline in quality of this
water body had not been quite so dramatic as the earlier reporter had noted.60
Nevertheless, recent scientific monitoring of the lake has revealed substantial
sediment infilling of the lake bed resulting from [h]istorical gold mining
activities in the lakes catchment.61
Chinese expressed a variety of views on the environmental changes wrought by
mining, and on the landscapes they encountered as miners. In walking with an
unnamed Chinese miner from the township of Riverton to Round Hill in 1882,
Don recorded that the two travellers passed through dense forest. Along the
way, Don paused to observe the many fern tree gullies, and the banks covered
with moss and ferns, and reflected that [a]s population increases[,] the trees
and scrub will, of course, decrease in quantity. Don contrasted his attitude
with that of the majority of Cantonese minersfor, as he perceived it, out of
a hundred Chinese perhaps ninety-nine have not the slightest relish for the
beauties which met us at every turn of this road.62 His comment, of course,
could have been equally true of the attitudes of the majority of European miners.
Later that year, again at Round Hill, Don recorded an instance illustrating some
miners awareness of the environmental destruction they were causing. Tsaam
and Tsang informed Don that while it would never do to dig for gold in China
in New Zealand it mattered not, as it had only been opened for a few years.
This was, they explained, because there is no fung shui [sic] in New Zealand
since it is tei wan (of earthy nature?) while China is tin wan [sic] (of heavenly
nature?). In traditional China, fengshui provided a system and set of rituals

60 Otago Witness, 9 March 1888, 14.
61 Marc Schallenberg and David Kelly, Ecological Condition of Six Shallow Southland Lakes, Report No. 2198
(Nelson: Cawthron Institute, 2012), 1.
124
Hungry Dragons
for managing humannature relations,63 according to which, land forms and

bodies of water direct the flow of the universal qi, or cosmic currents in both
propitious and inauspicious ways.64
The opinion of some Chinese at Riverton, the largest settlement near the Round
Hill diggings, contradicted the views of Tsaam and Tsang. [O]wing to the
arrangement of the hills and rivers about Riverton, Chinese here believed that
they enjoyed good fengshui.65 For those versed in its principles, Riverton, a town
nestled amidst hills overlooking water, presented a very favourable situation
indeed.66 Chinese also regarded Dunedins Octagon as lucky because the number
eightcorresponding to the Octagons number of sidessounds similar to the
character forming part of the word meaning to prosper or to grow wealthy.67
Another fascinating insight into attitudes towards environmental change is
the opinion among some Cantonese who attributed the increasing mildness
of the Southland climate to the presence of Chinese in the country, possibly
a reference to the similar European view that cultivation and deforestation
lessened rainfall and increased temperatures.68 The environmental effects of
Chinese mining operations, especially in their skilled use of water, caused
considerable environmental impacts in Otago that elicited a variety of attitudes
towards the Otago landscape and its modification.
Hungry dragons:69 The dredging boom and

miningagriculture tensions, late 1890s1910s
By the late nineteenth century, many colonists were starting to question the
environmental impacts of mining on agricultural land, especially following the
dredging boom of the 1890s, which was started by the Chinese entrepreneur
63 I have struggled to find appropriate or even approximate terms for Chinese concepts of the non-human
world. On the epistemological problems of translation of the term nature, see Robert P. Weller, Discovering
Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 1942. On wider issues of translated terms and concepts used in environmental history, see
Beattie and Tsui-jung Liu, Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia: Perspectives
from Environmental History, Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia: Perspectives from
Environmental History, ed. Beattie and Liu (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming), no pages.
64 Ole Bruun, The Fengshui Resurgence in China: Conflicting Cosmologies Between State and Peasantry,
China Journal 36 (1996): 48.
66 For greater detail of such views, see: Chinese Landscapes: The Village as Place, ed. Ronald G. Knapp
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992); Evelyn Lip, Feng Shui: Environments of Power: A Study of
Chinese Architecture (London: Academy, 1995).
67 On this, see Beattie, Eco-cultural Networks.
68 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 September 1883, 47. OnEuropean
ideas of climate change, see Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety; on Chinese, Mark Elvin, Who Was
Responsible for the Weather? Moral Meteorology in Late Imperial China, Osiris, 2nd ser., 13 (1998): 21337.
125
Choie Sew Hoy. Dredging revived a flagging gold-mining industry, but

also accelerated the ecological and landscape impacts of mining. Moreover,
itthreatened the prevailing ideology of closer land settlement and the nascent
fruit-growing industry in Central Otago.70
To contextualise these impacts, it is necessary to examine existing mining
regulations, which magnified tensions between mining and agricultural
interests. Gold-mining, notes historical geographer Terry Hearn, employed
the law of capture to allow mining law, resolve disputes and collect taxes.
Theseprivate water user rights differed sharply from private property rights,
which included rights of possession, use, management, income, security,
capital, transmission and absence of term. Effectively, New Zealands goldmining regulations permitted miners to foul waterways and despoil agricultural
land.71 The later introduction of mining regulations in California and Victoria
that required miners to restore and revegetate damaged agricultural land merely
stoked debates on its necessity in New Zealand.72
Minings merits versus agriculture were crystallised in an impassioned article
that presented mining as an activity inimical to the welfare of the country.
It also raised particular concerns about the increasing use of dredges, and
their ability to dramatically transform landscapes. In Paying Too Much for the
Golden Whistle (1906), the author contrasts mining and agriculture.
Where the one aims at the extraction of the organic wealth of the soil by assisting
the slow process of vital development, the other seeks for the inorganic material
of divers kinds lying hidden in the bowels of the earth which may be made
useful in maintaining the arts and crafts by which civilisation is supported
and embellished. Primarily, agriculture seeks to produce food, clothing, and
other comforts, while mining seeks to obtain the raw material from which is
manufactured the machinery whose use furthers the production and exchange
of the food, clothing, and other comforts of civilised life.73
Although mining might well represent the best use of poor quality land, abalance
needed to be struck between mining and agricultural interests to ensure the
Colonys long-term prosperity. Since New Zealands soils were productive, the
author argued, agricultural land should be protected from mining. Already,
hecontinued, as a result of hydraulic sluicing and dredging, [i]mmense masses
70 In response to agitation from increasing numbers of land-hungry settlers, a key manifesto of the Liberal
Government (18911912) involved land nationalisation, the breaking up of the larger estates for closer
settlement: Tom Brooking, Lands for the People? The Highland Clearances and the Colonisation of New Zealand:
A Biography of John McKenzie (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 1996).
71 Terry Hearn, Mining the Quarry, in Making a New Land, 10621 (quote at 108); and Bruun, Peasantry,
China Journal 36 (1996): 48. See also, Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies, The Sludge Question: The Regulation
of Mine Tailings in Nineteenth-Century Victoria, Environment and History20 (2014): 385410.
72 Hearn, Mining the Quarry, 10910, 117; Isenberg, Mining, 2351.
126
Hungry Dragons
of rich cultivable soil have been torn up and buried under heaps of worthless
clay and gravel, and much good land on the banks of streams has been rendered
temporarily valueless by deposits of raw sludge and silt. Dredging, in particular,
was responsible for converting many a smiling green field into a brown stony
waste, into which the rude and harsh vegetation of gorse, broom, thistles, and
ragwort invade; only once they have loosen[ed] and suppl[ied] humus to the
soil, can they be cleared and an attempt made to bring cultivation to the area.
By this means, the gnawing scoop of the dredge-bucket, and the vicious volleys
from the hydraulic nozzle have converted many splendid patches of fruitful
land into utterly irreclaimable wildernesses. The author likened a dredges
operation on the Island Blocklocated between Lawrence and Roxburgh along
the Clutha Riverto hungry dragons voraciously biting off huge chunks of this
superb land. Dredging removed 726,000 cubic yards of soil per year, effectively
destroying the equivalent of 36,000 worth of soil annually in order to get
5,000 worth of gold.74
The dredging boom was started by the Chinese entrepreneur, Choie Sew Hoy,
with his second son, Choie Kum Poy (18671942). They modified existing mining
technology to develop the first dredge in New Zealand whose protruding central
ladder of buckets and shallow draught enabled it to work river beds, beaches,
and flats. With modifications, the design became known as the New Zealand
Gold Dredge, a prototype for gold and tin dredges around the world.75
Sew Hoy began two dredging companies in 1889; the first was a private company
which changed into a public company that successfully worked out its claims
before undergoing liquidation. This first one sparked the initial dredging boom.
In 1889, Sew Hoy and his son also began anotherthe Nokomai Hydraulic
Sluicing Companythat was a great success, operating under various names
until 1943.76
For the second venture, which ushered in considerable environmental change
in New Zealand and elsewhere, Sew Hoy made use of New Zealand financial
systems, as well as expertise and environmental knowledge. He also utilised
labour and capital from China, New Zealand, and other New Gold Mountain
countries. For example, in 1889, Sew Hoy relied heavily on settler capital to
publically float the Sew Hoy Big Beach Gold Mining Companywith a nominal
capital of over 87,000, although subsequently revised to 72,000as a means
of taking over from the private Shotover Big Beach Gold Mining Company
(mentioned above). After its successful float, Sew Hoy became director and

76 See Ng, Windows, 1:31520; Terry Hearn and Ray Hargreaves, The Speculators Dream: Gold Dredging in
Southern New Zealand (Dunedin: Allied Press, 1985), 12; Ritchie, Archaeology and History of the Chinese, 59.
127
James Gore assumed the chair of the public company. It soon commissioned
three large new dredges from a European firm in Christchurch, costing 11,000
in total. As a result of its large yields, the Company was among the firstif not
the firstdredging company to seek public listing in New Zealand. Through
inexperience in this process, however, it over-capitalised, and so paid poor
dividends. Within only a few years, its dredges proved too small to mount the
new machinery demanded by the need for ever more powerful dredges.77
The successor to this venture, the Nokomai Hydraulic Sluicing Company
(Photo4), yielded much higher returns for investors. It, too, relied on Chinese
and European investment for funding, using European and Chinese mining
engineers and workers to operate it. Investments from profits made from this,
and Sew Hoys many other enterprises, contributed to the development of other
mining ventures, with further environmental impacts. Sew Hoy owned three
short-lived quartz mines, again backed by European and Chinese capital, but
using Chinese labour. He also controlled 175 hectares of river claims, developed
a significant water-race running from Lauder Creek to Becks and, with P. Beer
and R. Glenn, owned the Golden Stream Water Race Company, which supplied
water to part of the Kyeburn Diggings.78
In response to the dredging boom set off and sustained by Sew Hoy, government
faced mounting pressure from agricultural interests and land-hungry settlers
to regulate and restrict minings damaging effects. Despite this pressure,
government largely continued to support mining interests by introducing
piecemeal legislation, none of which significantly restricted mining operations.
For example, under Section 12 of the Mining Amendment Act of 1919, miners
wishing to operate dredges had to first apply to the local Commissioner of Crown
Lands for assessment of the agricultural value of the land, and to impose such
conditions as were necessary to prevent, so far as practicable, the destruction
of the surface of the land or the rendering of it unfit for pastoral or agricultural
purposes. Yetthis legislation did not apply to freehold land. Nor did it provide
the facility for reserving or protecting land destroyed by mining.79 At the same
time, government tried to placate private landowners. The Rivers Commission of
190001, established due to pressure from claimants, attempted to ascertain the
nature of mining needs and, where appropriate, proclaim watercourses suitable for
mining purposes. It also paid compensation to litigants whose land was affected by
mining: by March 1907, the Commission had paid out 51,000 in compensation,
an indication of the seriousness of minings impacts on other land uses.80
77
78
79
80
128
Ng, Windows, 3:27283.

Ng, Windows, 1:31516.
Hearn, Mining the Quarry, 11718.
Hearn, Mining the Quarry, 110.
Hungry Dragons
Photo 4: Sew Hoys Claim, Nokomai.

Source: Otago Witness, 5 December 1900, 28.
Notwithstanding compensation payments, the Rivers Commissions findings

and recommendations illustrate the extent of mining damage consequent on
hydraulic sluicing and dredging, and stress officialdoms general disregard for
minings environmental effects. For example, contrary to extensive evidence
reported in newspapers, the Commission disingenuously reported that [i]n
working the alluvial drifts by dredges in the beds of streams there is no likelihood
of any damage being done to land held by settlers along the banks, as a dredge
merely trenches up the gravel in the bed and deposits it again in nearly the same
place. Similarly, it casually noted that seeing that some of the principal rivers
have been used as main channels to carry off the waste water and silt from goldworkings during the past thirty-nine years, it saw no need to recommend that
the Clutha, Kawarau, Dunstan, Manuherikia, and Shag Rivers be proclaimed
129
watercourses into which tailings, debris, and waste water from mining claims
may be discharged.81 It seemed politically sensible to keep quiet rather than to
condone a dubious practice that was already well established.
That Chinese miners contributed to this pollution is in no doubt. As noted,
Sew Hoys investments and improvements in dredging technology substantially
accelerated environmental change, as did the operations of Chinese miners
engaged in more capital-intensive operations. Photo 5 illustrates the effects of
Chinese sluicing and elevating on Spec Gully, near Naseby, on the Mt. Ida Gold
Field. Note, especially, the deep gullying caused by the operations, including
the removal of topsoil and underlying rock, as well as the diversion of water.
Photo 5: James Ng identifies the individuals as (left to right): Sue/Sew

Hoy, G. H. McNeur, and Shum Bun.82
Source: Sluicing on the gold-field at Spec Gully in Naseby, shows miners and Rev. George H. McNeur.
McNeur Collection: Photographs of Chinese goldminers who worked in Otago and Southland goldfields. Ref: 1/2-019157-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
81 AJHR, H-21, vol. 1, 1901, 6.

130
Hungry Dragons
Eco-cultural networks: Commodity and raw

material exchanges
These examples of mining enterprises illustrate that Chinese were agents
of environmental transformation, willing to contribute to the same urge to
transform colonial nature into commodities as colonists and, to varying
degrees, Mori.83 Chinese miners seized the opportunities presented by New
Zealands shipping connections and availability of land. They utilised its legal
apparatuses and financial systems, and grafted them, in varying ways, onto their
own networks of expertise and knowledge drawn from China and elsewhere.
This was as apparent on the scale of small, clan-based mining claims as it was in
the large-scale operations of wealthy merchants like Choie Sew Hoy.
Like several other merchants, Sew Hoys warehouses supplied gold-fields
Chinese, and some Europeans, with goods from China and elsewhere. Merchants
like Sew Hoy provided vital support to Chinese going to the gold-fields; in Sew
Hoys case, to men from Panyu. Their stores operated as bridgeheads into the
interior for incoming Chinese. Merchants supplied goods and services, such
as accommodation, loans, and advice to Chinese miners, as well as gambling
and opium smoking cooked meals and alcohol, a meeting place and an
informal news exchange and usually services such as interpreting and
letter writing.84 They also often provided medical treatments, as well as
ingredients for use in traditional medicines.85 By the 1880s, there were at least
40 Chinese storekeepers.86 Archaeological evidenceand advertisements from
the timedemonstrate the local and international resource demand created by
Chinesemining.
Chinese miners resource demands had environmental impacts locally, nationally,
and internationally. Overseas resource demand developed environmental
exchanges and furthered environmental exploitation and investment in China
and New Zealand, connections reinforced through the export of New Zealand
natural products to China.87 For example, Sew Hoys investment in other mining
operations and ventures brought further environmental impacts. Although
Sew Hoys business dealings were unusual, because of the large capital he had
available and in the associations he developed with European investors, most
83 Beattie, Eco-cultural Networks, 165.

85 Ng, Windows, 1:200201; Beattie, Eco-cultural Networks, 161.
87 Beattie, Melillo, and OGorman, Introduction: Eco-Cultural Networks and the British Empire, 1837
1945, in Eco-Cultural Networks.
131
small-scale Chinese operations, even with relatively little capital and reliant
on Chinese investment, created local and international resource demand, with
resulting environmental impacts.
Figure 4: Gold exported from New Zealand to Hong Kong and China
inounces, 18661901.
Source: Table 7Gold Exports to China, in Ng, Windows, 1:349.
It is as difficult to chart the specific domestic and overseas environmental impacts

resulting from the demand for goods from New Zealand-based Chinese as it is
to discern the associated services and labour flows which underpinned them.
Such an undertaking requires investigation of resource chains associated with
particular commodities, a process I have only just begun to untangle as part of
research on a manuscript on which I am presently working.88 Nevertheless, an
outline of some of the goods consumed by Chinese miners in New Zealand offers
a starting point for considering some of the interlinked environmental, social,
and economic dimensions of Chinese migration.
Chinese imported much of their food and drink, and other daily items, including
medicine, from their homeland and elsewhere. This included everything from
rice (Figure 5)mainly from Australia, India, Java, and from the 1880s, Japan
and Hong Kong89and ceramics, along with newspapers, writing tools, coins,
and opium (Figure 6).90 Among the Chinese, rice, as Don observed, is the
stuff [sic] of life, and occupies greater prominence than any single dish among
88 At this stage a working title is South ChinaNew Zealand Environmental Connections: Market Gardening,
Gold Mining and Guangdongs Guiqiao Landscapes.
89 Ng, Windows, vol1, 355, note 29a. See also, E. OGorman, Experiments, Environments, and Networks:
Commercial Rice Cultivation in South-Eastern Australia, 19001945, in Eco-cultural Networks, 23362.
132
Hungry Dragons
ourselves, being eaten at least twice and sometimes thrice a day. Sometimes,
it would also be accompanied by pork, cabbage, mutton, celery, onions, fish
(fresh and preserved), pickles, turnips, fowl, potatoes, duck, &c. At a small
meal sometimes only pastry is eaten.91 More commonly, however, miners
in New Zealand ate simple meals of rice, often served with a small portion of
meat or, more rarely, preserved fish.92 Occasionally, more luxurious items were
sold in Chinese warehouses. Don ate moon-cakes, presumably locally made.93
At his Round Hill store, the Otago Witness reporter noted that its proprietor,
WongYoung Wah, offered the reporter cum quots [sic], preserved plums, and
other Chinese delicacies, which we find very grateful [pleasing] to our European
palates. The reporter also recorded some queer-looking objects dangling
from the roof, including deers feet, dried serpents, and other indescribable
atrocities, an illustration of the importance of imported items in Chinese
traditional medicine.94 Very rarely did Chinese use locally grown plants in
preparing their medicines.95
Figure 5: Rice imports into New Zealand.

Source: Table 9Rice Imports, in Ng, Windows, 1:350.
91 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 December 1882, 104.
92 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 October 1882, 66.
93 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 November 1884, 85.
94 Otago Witness, 9 March 1888, 4.
95 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 August 1882, 28.
133
Figure 6: Opium imported into New Zealand, 186679.

Source: Table 10Opium Imports, in Ng, Windows, 1:351.
Demand for perishables, such as hens and wild-fowl, pigs, and cattle, as well as
eggs, bread, sugar, and flour was satisfied locally.96 Most Chinese supplemented
this diet with produce grown in a domestic vegetable garden or orchard. Indeed,
among the gold seekers, the Chinese were unusual in that most miners had a
gardenincluding even the poorest living in the most ramshackle of abodes
(Photo 1.6).
Photo 6: Unidentified Chinese man and the Rev. Alexander Don outside
adwelling and vegetable garden in Waikaia (also known as Switzers).
Source: Chinese man and Reverend Alexander Don outside a dwelling in Waikaia. McNeur Collection:
Photographs of Chinese gold miners who worked in Otago and Southland gold-fields. Ref: 1/2-019146F. Reproduced with the permission of Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
134
96 Ritchie, Archaeology and History of the Chinese; A. Piper, Chinese Diet and Cultural Conservatism in
Nineteenth-century southern New Zealand, Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology 6 (1988): 3442.
Hungry Dragons
In addition, Chinese introduced seeds and bulbs of plants familiar to them from
their homeland, as well as growing vegetables commonly found in colonial
New Zealand, especially potatoes. In 1883, for example, Don [c]aught up
with a man carefully carrying a stock of turnip seed grown in China; the seed,
like all other Chinese productions, he considered immensely superior to the
foreign article.97 Box-thorn is likely to have been cultivated by Chinese, who
ate its leaves.98 Bok Choy, and Pak Choi, as well as rhubarb, and chives, and
bean sprouts were also commonly available.99 Chinese grew vegetables eaten by
Europeanspotatoes, peas, carrots, etc.for their own table,100 but appreciated
aesthetic varieties too. At Round Hill, Banner of Joy proudly showed Don his
neighbours rose bush.101 Indeed, Chinese market gardeners were also probably
the first to introduce several ornamentals from China into New Zealand.
For example, in 1871, the gardener Wong Koo displayed Chinese Narcissus,
possibly Narcissus tazetta var. chinensis (Chinese Sacred Lily or daffodil) at the
Dunedin Horticultural Society, winning a special prize for them. This is the first
recorded mention of the Chinese Sacred Lily in New Zealand.102
Many Chinese market gardeners enteredand wonhorticultural and
sometimes floricultural competitions run by Europeans. By the latter nineteenth
century, they also supplied colonial towns with most of their vegetables.103
Thegrudging respect accorded to Chinese miners by colonists applied equally
to Chinese market gardeners:
There is no class of people on the face of the earth that can take more out of
a half-acre of good soil than the Chineseevery inch of surface is brought
into requisition and nothing is wasted. With all other conditions equal,
JohnChinaman will make more out of one acre than John Bull will out of double
that area.104
As I have shown in much greater detail elsewhere, Chinese market gardening,

just like Chinese mining, was an important source of environmental change in
New Zealand, but an activity which also encouraged cultural and intellectual
interactions otherwise prevented by linguistic and racial divisions. Chinese
vegetable sellers, and later fruit shops, were a commonplace sightand an
integral part of the colonial economy. Market gardening and vegetable selling
afforded Europeans an opportunity to judge and criticise Chinese, but at other
97 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 January 1883, 127.
98 Ng, Windows, 1:338, note 143g.
99 Ng, Windows, 1:341, notes 151a, 151b.
100 Beattie, Empire of the Rhododendron.
101 Alexander Don, New Zealand Presbyterian Chinese Mission: Twenty-first Inland Otago Tour, 19071908
(Dunedin: Otago Daily Times, 1908), 5.
102 Beattie, Eco-cultural Networks, n. p.
103 Beattie, Empire of the Rhododendron, 25157.
104 Tuapeka Times, 7 August 1886, 2.
135
times a chance to praise their practices, share garden cultures, and foster
economic transactions and cultural exchanges among them, and sometimes with
Mori too.105 Indeed, the employment of Mori in Chinese market gardens in
northern New Zealand led to more permanent ChineseMori relations through
intermarriage, to the outrage of some in colonial New Zealand.106 On the Otago
gold-fields, too, it is likely that the fresh vegetables supplied by Chinese market
gardeners helped stave off scurvy.107
Chinese gold-fields stores, and restaurants, also catered to European customers.
For example, at Cromwell, in 1881 Kum Good Wa described himself as a Chinese
Storekeeper and Fancy Goods Warehouseman. He advertised On Sale at
Prices which will command a regular market, Teas, Sugars and General Groceries
for English as well as Chinese customers.108 European storehouses also imported
Chinese goods, as shown in the advertisement reproduced in Photo 7. Imports
for a European market included Chinese tea, which remained very popular in
early colonial New Zealand until a gradual shift towards the consumption of
tea grown in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India from the 1850s, a trend also reflected
across the British Empire.109
Aside from gold (Figure 4), vast quantities of New Zealand resources were also
exported overseas. The entrepreneur Chew Chong (c. 18301920) amassed a
fortune by exporting the edible tree fungusAuricularia polytricha (Photo8)
that grew in abundance in the North Islands forests, particularly on rotting logs.
Chew Chong collected the fungus from colonists and Mori, and, once dried,
sent it to Dunedin for export to Chinawith some also being sent to New South
Wales.110 Most likely this operation took place in conjunction with a number
of Chinese merchants, including Choie Sew Hoyat the very least, SewHoy
was involved in shipping the fungus, as was Chan Ah Chee (18511930, but
105 On the nineteenth century, see: Beattie, Eco-Cultural Networks; Beattie, Empire of the Rhododendron.
On the twentieth century social interactions, see Lily Lee and Ruth Lam, Sons of the Soil: Chinese Market
Gardeners in New Zealand (Pukekohe: Dominion Federation of New Zealand Chinese Commercial Growers Inc.,
2012).
106 Report of the Committee on the Employment of Maoris on Market Gardens, AJHR, G-11, 1929, 5; J. B. J.
Lee, Jade Taniwha: Maori-Chinese Identity and Schooling in Aotearoa (Auckland: Rautaki Ltd, 2007); M. Ip, The
Dragon & the Taniwha: Maori & Chinese in New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2009); Jessica
Heine, Colonial Anxieties and the Construction of Identities: The Employment of Maori Women in Chinese
Market Gardens, Auckland, 1929 (M.A. diss., University of Waikato, 2006).
107 Ng, personal communication.
108 Cromwell Argus, 17 May 1881, cited in Ritchie, Archaeology and History of the Chinese, 36.
109 Melillo, Empire in a Cup: Imagining Colonial Geographies through British Tea Consumption, in Ecocultural Networks, 6891. Over the nineteenth century, New Zealand colonists remained avid tea drinkers,
out-sipping all other colonial consumers per head of population in the 1860s and 1870s. Tony Ballantyne,
India in New Zealand: The Fault Lines of Colonial Culture, in India in New Zealand: Local Identities, Global
Relations, ed. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2010), 2425.
110 No. 2. Mr. W. Townsend to Mr. W. Seed. (No. 8.) Custom House, New Plymouth, 15 March 1873, in
Exportation of Fungus to China (Correspondence Relative to), H-39, AJHR, 1873, 1.
136
Hungry Dragons
commonly known as Ah Chee) in Auckland.111 The fungus generated significant

export revenue for Chew Chong and the others involved in the industry; from
1880 to 1920 New Zealand fungus exports totalled 401,551.112
Photo 7: Advertisement showing the popularity of varieties of Chinese tea

among colonists.
Source: New Zealand Herald, 24 October 1868, 2.
111 Ng, Windows, 3;269.

112 AJHR, 18801920.
137
Photo 8: Specimens of New Zealand fungus.

Source: Supplement to the Auckland Weekly News, 22 August 1901, 11. Sir George Grey Special
Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19010822-11-6.
Sew Hoy, Chew Chong, and Ah Chee were unusual among Chinese in that
they chose to reinvest much of their profits into enterprises in New Zealand.
Mostof their countrymen instead sent money as remittances to China. Unlike
the contribution of Chinese from South East Asia to their homeland, an overall
picture of remittance payments sent from overseas Chinese in New Zealand
to southern China is unavailable because of the paucity of sources. Based on
what scattered evidence remains, James Ng has shown that of the relatively few
recorded remittances from New Zealand, the largest amount was 22. Most were
of a few pounds sterling only.113
113 Ng, Windows, vol. 1, 345356.
138
Hungry Dragons
This reflected the fact that many Chinese were left stranded and indebted in New
Zealand. For example, in a rare letter preserved from the nineteenth century, in
1889 Chau Pak Cheung thanked the Honourable issuer of the original
loan for reducing his brothers debt to him and described his brothers situation
in the following terms:
Ya-Hang [?] was only a gold-miner, he had no savings, and is now living in
poverty. He has not been able to return the money. And I am also poor and
thus not in the position to repay the debt on his behalf. I guess that Ya-Hang
will not be able to return home. Now his health is restored and lives at my shop
temporarily. Once he finds a job and is able to make some savings, he shall repay
the debt.114
Overseas Chinese provided an important source of revenue for particular districts

of southern Chinawhich became known as qiaoxiang, returners villages
the families of which were, by late Imperial and early Republican times, eagerly
courted by government authorities desperate for foreign exchange.115 Research
on Chinese remittances indicates that such funds were used in a variety of
ways, from the establishment of businesses, orphanages, and hospitals, to the
refurbishment and erection of buildings, including ancestral halls, private
residences, towers, and the like. Returning Chinese also spent their money on
buildings and gardens, which often incorporated architectural or botanical
elements from the places they had lived in overseas.
Environmental changes in south China

The return of many overseas Chineseor their remains (known as former
men)to their places of birth established ongoing trans-local environmental
connections between south China and parts of New Zealand. At the same time,
New Zealand missions to the Chinese from the late nineteenth century (as a
result of the migration of Chinese to New Zealand) also set in motion new ecocultural networks.
114 Alexander Don, Chinese Booklets, posters, etc, New Zealand Presbyterian Archives, Dunedin, 3/131.
115 The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, ed. Lynn Pan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998),
1823; Ta Chen, Livelihood, in Homeland Ties and Agencies of Interaction, ed. Hong Liu (vol. 4, The Chinese
Overseas) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 326 [originally published as Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South
China: A Study of Overseas Migration and its Influence (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940)]; George
L. Hicks, Overseas Chinese Remittances from Southeast Asia, 19101940 (Singapore: Select Books, 1993); Hsu,
Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home.
139
The Canton Villages Mission (CVM) was established in 1898 by the Presbyterian
Synod of Otago and Southland. The CVM built on Cantonese sojournourism,
as illustrated by Dons remarks on revisiting the Pearl River Delta region in the
late 1890s after an absence of some 17 years. At Nam-Kong (Mandarin, Nan He,
or South River village), Don met a man who knows intimately the family of my
first Chinese teacher, and another who lives a few doors from a man known in
New Zealand for 14 years.116
Remittances sent by Chinese in New Zealand, like those from elsewhere, helped
to alter south Chinas landscapes. For example, at Shek Ma (Mandarin, Shi Ma,
or Stone Horse village) Don recorded that the Chan Ancestral Hall had been built
almost entirely using money collected by New Zealand Chinese.117 Remittance
money enabled improvements to, and investments in, existing property, as well
as the purchase of new. For example, Don recorded that a Mr Kong wants
to make 200 here [New Zealand], when he will return to China, get married
again, and buy a farm. Land will cost from 40 to 60 taels of silver per mau [mu]
(100an acre), but 8 or 10 mau (1 acres) is a large farm.118 Another example
comes from the family of the historian James Ng. At Wing Loong (Toishan),
several generations of chain migration enabled the family to buy land, build a
tower (for security purposes), and educate the clan.
Some of the wealthy returnees even built houses in the Western style. The Rev.
George Hunter McNeur (18741953), of the CVM, recorded visiting a Chinese
man, near Whitestone Mart, returned from Sydney, who had built a house as
far as possible, in Western style.119 The Auckland merchant, Chan Ah Chee
and his wife, Joong Chew Lee, retired in 1920 to a fashionable area of Canton.
Theirthree-storey house at 19 Sai Street, Tung Shan, Canton (Mandarin, Dong
Shan), set in extensive grounds of about two to three acres (0.6 to 1.2 hectares),
had a Western room in which Joong Chew Lee, would display western style
art and pictures, as well as play the piano and sing hymns.120 Like many other
wealthy returning Chinese, Ah Chee constructed a garden at his mansion,
although few details of it survive. Other returning Chinese developed gardens
showing some of the designs and plants Chinese migrants had experienced
while in Gold or New Gold Mountain.121
116 Alexander Don, Under Six Flags: Being Notes on Chinese in Samoa, Hawaii, United States, British
Columbia, Japan and China (Dunedin: J. Wilkie & Co., 1898), 91.
117 Don, Under Six Flags, 9192.
118 Alexander Don, Our Chinese Mission, The New Zealand Presbyterian, 2 April 1883, 184.
119 George Hunter McNeur, Feeling the Way in the Canton Villages (Dunedin: Otago Daily Times, 1902), 33.
120 May Sai Louie [grand-daughter of Ah Chee], interview, 21 December 2007, Lily Lee, cited in Lee and
Lamb, Chan Dah Chee, 18511930, (unpublished research paper, 2009), 2526.
121 Selia Jinhua Tan, Guangdong Qiaoxiang Culture Research Center, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, is
undertaking pioneering work on the landscapes created by these returning Chinese. Also note, for example,
Judith Brandel and Tina Turbeville, Tiger Balm Gardens: A Chinese Billionaires Fantasy Environments (Hong
Kong: Aw Boon Haw Foundation, 1998).
140
Hungry Dragons
The repatriation to south China of the bodies of Cantonese who died in

New Zealand represented a different kind of connection established between
NewZealand and the districts around Guangzhou. The need to inter the remains
of returning Chinese from New Zealand and other gold mountains, and to
maintain the appropriate rituals of veneration, impacted on land-use practices
in south China.122 A mortuary temple and site near Upper Panyus Shek Moon
was maintained by Cantonese from Panyu and Hua districts, who had formed
the Cheong Shing Tong, a burial society that also kept up a society house in
Hong Kong for its members.123
Another dimension of the landscape changes initiated through New Zealand
Chinese migration was the CVM presence in Panyu, at Kong Chuen. The CVM
established a network of churches as well as a hospital and theological college
there, which led to a greater frequency of contacts between south China and
southern New Zealand through the movement of people, the advent of mission
work, and regular accounts in New Zealand of life there. For example, missionary
interest in Panyu and its surroundings triggered articles and talks about Chinese
garden practices and landscapes in New Zealand.124 Indeed, some missionaries,
like George McNeur, regarded an understanding of Chinese customs and
practices, including its agricultural systems, as absolutely central in laying
the groundwork for evangelisation. In his The Missionary in Changing China,
McNeur claimed that South Chinas intensive system of cultivation which has
been prevalent for so many centuries was [a]nother almost universal factor in
the evolution of the Chinese brain.125 In addition to such written descriptions is
the possible introduction of New Zealand plants into the missionary compound
in Kong Chuen, which had formal pathways and gardens.126
Chinese and British imperial environmental

historiography
If the history of overseas Chinese in New Zealand contributes to growing
scholarship highlighting the importance of non-state actors as agents of landscape
change in the British Empire, then it also challenges the overwhelming attention
given to Europeans as drivers of that environmental transformation. In2011,
122 Note, Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather, The Road Home: Repatriating Chinese Emigrants After Death, New
Zealand Geographer 58, no. 1 (2002): 513.
123 Ng, Windows, 1:6466.
124 Note, for example, the descriptions in Don, Under Six Flags, 9697;
125 McNeur, The Missionary in Changing China (Dunedin: Foreign Missions Committee of the Presbyterian
Church of New Zealand, 1935), 28.
126 Note images in William A. Mawson, Canton Villages Mission of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand
(Dunedin: Foreign Missions Committee, 1926), 4950.
141
Paul Star coined the memorable phrase biota barons to describe colonists
who had played a disproportionate part in causing New Zealand ecological
change.127 He had in mind primarily Europeans. This article suggests the need
to broaden his category to include Chinesenot just in studies of New Zealand
environmental history, but also for those of other settler colonies and New
World societies. This responds to Micah Muscolinos suggestion that scholars
need to situate Chinese environmental history within global trends.128 For this
article, this has meant examining the importance of trans-local case studies
mainly between Canton and Otagoin colonial environmental history.
Examining overseas Chinese environmental transformation in places like
NewZealand has potential to shift scholarship on relations between China and
the western world away from questions framed solely around opium and the
unequal treaties. Asymmetries in power relations existed, of course, and in
NewZealand legislative and social racism faced by Cantonese restricted their
ability to migrate and access capital, as well as limiting other opportunities.
Yet, alongside stories of Chinas one hundred years of humiliation, through
examination of the transformation of imperial environments, historians can
recover something of the agency of Chinese in this troubled century and the
next.129 In addition, it has the potential to enrich scholarship on Chinese diaspora
and migrant networks, which has ignored the environmental dimensions of
migration.130
Paying attention to overseas Chinese environmental history can help place
into stark relief the sometimes profound differences within Chinas own
environmental history. Notably, it can stress the need to recognise Chinas
environmental heterogeneity and, as Robert B. Marks and Mark Elving among
others have noted, the existence of major environmental sub-regions in China
and the role of different hinterlands in creating them.131 As Marks showed in
Tigers, Rice, Silt, & Silk, post-sixteenth century overseas contact coupled with
the activities of overseas Chinese in South East Asia fundamentally shaped
127 Star, New Zealands Biota Barons.

128 Micah Muscolino, Global Dimensions of Modern Chinas Environmental History, World History
Connected 6 (2009): 31 paragraphs, www.historycooperative.org/journals/whc/6.1/muscolino.html, accessed
19 January 2012.
129 See: Beattie, Chinese Ghosts in a New Zealand Landscape: Environmental Change and Perception among
Cantonese in Otago and Europeans in Canton, 1860s1930s (draft MS).
130 Most studies of the Chinese diaspora examine self-help societies and political organisations, as well as
business and migration networks, and issues of identity formation and racism. McKeown, Melancholy Order;
Keir Reeves, Lionel Frost, and Charles Fahey, Integrating the historiography of the nineteenth-century gold
rushes, Australian Economic History Review 50 (2010): 11128; Reeves, Tracking the Dragon Down Under:
Chinese Cultural Connections in Gold Rush Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand,Graduate Journal of AsiaPacific Studies 5 (2005), 4166.
131 Robert B. Marks, China, Its Environment and History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); Elvin,
Retreat of the Elephants.
142
Hungry Dragons
Guangzhou and Fujians environmental histories. This article demonstrates that

nineteenth-century Cantonese access to southern Pacific capital and resources
also contributed to environmental change near Guangzhou.132
Several fruitful areas of comparison are also opened up through studying
Cantonese-New Zealand exchanges. For example, did environmental change by
overseas Chinese in Gold Mountain and New Gold Mountain represent the same
drive to exploit Chinas internal frontiers as was evident in late Qing Mongolia,
Manchuria, and Yunnan? Was private capitalas utilised by overseas Chinese
in Gold Mountain and New Gold Mountainor state direction (Xinjiang)
of Chinese entrepreneurs the best means of ensuring the success of such
operations, and which had the greater environmental impacts? For example, in
contrast to earlier policies, the late nineteenth-century Chinese state encouraged
gold-mining near Tacheng, Xinjiang133 as a means of pacifying and securing
a marginal region. Did this changing opinion on Xinjiang gold-mining shift
official attitudes towards Chinese gold-miners overseas, too?
In this period, as scholars such as Peter Lavelle and Joseph Lawson are
demonstrating, the model of Euro-American imperialism and resource
development received widespread, if not always accurate, reporting among
officials tasked with settling Chinas frontiers.134 The irony was it was the likes
of the overseas Chinese more than the scholar elite who not only knew more
about, but also implemented and sometimes introduced and adapted Western
technology in new territories in the British Empire and elsewhere. This points
to the lack of knowledge transfer in China across social classes as well as
over geographical boundaries, from north China to south China. Each group
had different sources of information: scholar officials commonly gained much
knowledge about the outside world from Japan,135 while overseas Chinese gained
this directly, from the countries in which they were living.
Finally, the articles focus on the environmental dimensions of gold-mining
highlights a strangely neglected, yet significant, dimension of New Zealands
environmental historiography. From 1850 to 1908, New Zealand provided three
per cent of the worlds gold production.136 In the 1860s, gold was New Zealands
132 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silt, & Silk.
133 Judd Kinzley, Turning Prospectors into Settlers: Gold, Immigrant Miners and the Settlement of the
Frontier in Late Qing Xinjiang, in Sherman Cochran and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds., China on the Margins (Ithaca:
Cornell University East Asia Series, 2010), 1741.
134 Peter Lavelle, The aesthetics and politics of Chinese horticulture in late Qing borderlands, in
Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Tsui-jung Liu (London: Routledge,
2014), 21342; Joseph Lawson, The Chinese State and Agriculture in an Age of Global Empires, 18801949,
in Eco-Cultural Networks, 4467.
135 Lawson, The Chinese State and Agriculture, 5055.
136 Bateman New Zealand Historical Atlas/ Ko Papatuanuku e Takoto Nei (Auckland: David Bateman and
Department of Internal Affairs, 1997), plate 44.
143
main source of export revenue. For example, in the 1860s, [s]ome 21 million
worth of gold enriched Otago.137 Even after this period, it enjoyed periods
of economic significance, notably during the dredging boom of the 1890s.138
Yet despite its economic, social, and environmental importance, gold-minings
history has been largely subsumed by a dominant scholarly focus on pastoralism
and small-scale farming. Industrial mechanisation and the accumulation of the
necessary capital, especially following hydraulic mining and dredging, points
to a similar situation as that in California, in which, as Andrew C. Isenberg
has noted, the intervention in the form of steam and hydraulic engineering
stabilised and ordered a dynamic system that attracted further investment
capital.139
Conclusion
Especially in Otago, Chinese gold-miners had significant environmental impacts.
Their activities altered hydraulic regimes and caused soil erosion. They reduced
timber supplies, displaced vegetation, and diverted scant water supplies.
In developing these new resources, Chinese miners seized opportunities
presented by the Colonys shipping connections. They took advantage of its
legal apparatuses and financial systems, and incorporated them into their own
networks of expertise and knowledge, labour, and capital drawn from China
and elsewhere. Through their access to Chinese and New Zealand capital and
labour, a few high-earning Chinese, such as Sew Hoy, invested profits in the
Colony, by developing new industries and opening up new frontiers of resource
exploitation.
Their activities, impacting on environments in south China and elsewhere,
need to be included in environmental histories of both settler societies and
China itself. The story of the overseas Chinese can add a global comparative
dimension to Chinese environmental history and significantly enrich regional
understandings of that countrys environmental diversity. Finally, this article
supports Christine Meisner Rosens argument for the urgent importance of
engaging in research that integrates business and environmental history,140 by
stressing the environmental dimensions of Chinese business activities.
137 Erik Olssen, A History of Otago (Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1984), 66.
138 See Graph 4: Composition of exports, 18611976 (by value) in Geoffrey W. Rice, ed., The Oxford History
of New Zealand, second ed. (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1981), 597.
139 Isenberg, Mining, 21.
140 Christine Meisner Rosen, The BusinessEnvironment Connection, Environmental History 10, 1 (2005):
77.
144
Hungry Dragons
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the support and encouragement of Dr. James Ng, including for
the loan of unpublished material. For their constructive comments and help,
Ialso thank Duncan M. Campbell, Chris Elder, Peter Holland, Joseph Lawson,
Phoebe Li, Liu Tsui-jung, Robert B. Marks, Nic MacArthur, Paul Star, Selia
Jinhua Tan, Elizabeth Teather, the anonymous reviewers, and the staff of the
Presbyterian Archives Aotearoa and Hocken Library, University of Otago.
AVice-Chancellors Award from the University of Waikato funded this research,
in addition to a Small Research Grant, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
University of Waikato.
145
(RE)INTERPRETING EXOTIC
PLANTATION FORESTRY IN
1920SNEW ZEALAND
MICHAEL ROCHE
School of People, Environment and Planning,
Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North.
M.M.Roche@massey.ac.nz
Abstract
Environmental historians who have contributed to the understanding of econationalism in New Zealand and within the sub-area of forest history have shown
how deforestation produced a preservationist impulse and an exotic afforestation
response to timber famine. My own work, in partial contrast, has tended to explore the
largely unsuccessful efforts at indigenous forest management for production in the
nineteenth century as well as suggesting that the large-scale afforestation boom of the
1920s and 1930s was a departure from the anticipated direction of state efforts when
the Forests Department was established in 1919. Previously I have argued that the
New Zealand State Forest Service under its first director L. M. Ellis initially favoured an
orthodox state forestry model anchored on sustained-yield management of indigenous
forests, and only later turned to large-scale exotic plantations, in order to forestall
a projected timber famine by 1965, and to buy time to enable the mechanisms for
regenerating indigenous forests to be understood. This paper looks more closely at
Ellis initial statements about the role of plantation forestry and suggests that a partial
change of interpretation is needed.
Keywords: state forestry, historical geography, environmental history, afforestation,

New Zealand.
Introduction
This article grows out of some of the differences in, emphasis on, and
interpretations of New Zealands forest history that exist in the publications of
New Zealand historians and my own writing as an historical geographer working
in the field typically labelled environmental history. This mostly rests on the
significance of scientific forestry and of exotic afforestation in New Zealand in
147
the 1920s. Previously I have argued that L. M. Ellis,1 as first Director of Forests
in New Zealand (192028), initially favoured an orthodox state forestry model
anchored on sustained-yield management of indigenous forests, and only later
turned to large-scale exotic plantations, in order to forestall a projected timber
famine by 1965, and to buy time to enable the mechanisms for regenerating
indigenous forests to be understood.2 This interpretation has tended to be
set aside by local environmental historians, who instead draw more direct
connections between nineteenth-century private tree-planting and large-scale
exotic afforestation in the 1930s and downplay the role of professional foresters
in forest conservation.
In this paper I take the opportunity to reflect on these differences in a broader
context and then look more closely than previously at Ellis pre-New Zealand
forestry influences and his initial statements about the role of plantation
forestry in New Zealand in order to reassess whether it was the great departure
from his professional training that I have previously asserted it to be.3 A later
section then offers a counterfactual assessment of the direction of forestry in
New Zealand had Ellis not been appointed. I conclude by suggesting a small
but not insignificant repositioning over interpreting the course of deforestation,
tree-planting, and forestry in New Zealand from the late nineteenth to the
midtwentieth century.
1 Ellis tended to sign himself as MacIntosh, which was sometime rendered as MacKintosh in the press,
but official documents suggest McIntosh is legally correct and it is what he was hired under when he came
to New Zealand. This latter point shaped the variation of the spelling I adopted for his entry in the Dictionary
of New Zealand Biography. I can avoid this complication in the text by referring to him as L. M. Ellis, but
McKelvey has tended to favour MacIntosh. Ellis writings cited later in the paper have the spelling used on
the actual document.
2 Michael Roche, The New Zealand Timber Economy 1840 to 1935, Journal of Historical Geography
16(1990): 295313; Michael Roche, The State as Conservationist, 192060: Wise use of forests, lands and
water, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson (Melbourne: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 18399.
3 This paper was originally presented in a session on forest histories at the New Zealand Historical
Association conference held at the University of Otago in Dunedin in November 2013. As such, it preceded
the publication of the Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand by a few days. Some of
the points raised in the closing chapter of that book address issues that are raised herein. For these reasons
and because I have attempted a revisionist interpretation of some of my own work, I have left portions of the
text in the first person, rather than creating a veneer of detachment by changing it to the third person and
retro-fitting it to take Making a New Land into account.
148
(Re)Interpreting Exotic Plantation Forestry in 1920s New Zealand
Historical geography and environmental history

Anglophone historical geographers can trace the recognisable origins of their
sub-disciplinary specialism in geography at least back to the nineteenth century.
One part of this intellectual heritage, shared with geography more generally,
involved the study of the relationship between people and environment.
Encountering US environmental history in the 1990s, historical geographers,
myself included, were struck by the enthusiasm that these scholars brought
to their endeavours and the extent to which many seemed to be unaware
of historical geographys considerable and comparatively long-standing
endeavours in related fields. Something of this combination of interest and
indignation was captured in papers by leading UK, Australian and US historical
geographers on the relationship between environmental history and historical
geography.4 More recently and in a more conciliatory vein, R. M. Wilson, in
the US context, has written of environmental historical geography and a
shared use of narrative by historical geographers and environmental historians.5
Meanwhile, M.V. Melosi has suggested that environmental historians have some
generalized affection for geography but also posed the question of whether
any intellectual convergence between historical geography and environmental
history is byblood or by marriage.6
Some of my work has been described as environmental history and on other
occasions I have been labelled as an environmental historian. In the latter
instance this was a friendly enough invitation to attach myself to another group
of scholars working on past environments. My own response has typically been
to identify myself as an historical geographer, reasoning that I do not have to cease
to be an historical geographer in order to do historical environmental research
and that my initial exposure to geography means that the sorts of questions I ask
are not the same as those posed by historians. For me, environmental history has
two partially overlapping configurations, one as a subset of academic history
and the other as an interdisciplinary arena in which are gathered historical
geographers, historians, other historically inclined social scientists, and various
paleo-oriented earth scientists.
4 Michael Williams, The Relations of Environmental History and Historical Geography, Journal of
Historical Geography 20 (1994): 321; Joseph Powell, Historical geography and environmental history: an
Australian interface, Journal of Historical Geography 22 (1996): 25373; Craig Colten, Historical geography
and Environmental history, Geographical Review 88 (1998): iiiiv.
5 R. M. Wilson, The past and future of environmental historical geographies, Journal of Historical
Geography 43 (2014): 16063.
6 M. V. Melosi, Environmental history and historical geography: an (often) excellent relationship?,
Journal of Historical Geography 43 (2014): 16367.
149
Although the emphasis has changed over time, my historical geography writing,
compared to the New Zealand environmental historians, has been a little more
obviously theoretically informed. Though still largely based on narrative,
ittypically has a stronger concern for space and place (though less so than many
human geographers with respect to space), and recently at least, has focused on
shorter spans of time, mainly in the twentieth century. Importantlyand this
imposes limitsit has also tended to concentrate on the role of state institutions
and been particularly concerned with forests and land use. New Zealand
environmental historians grounded in academic history might be contrasted as
working on a wider suite of topics, though still largely rural, across larger time
periods and displaying a greater interest in the attitudes, values, and activities
of settler civil society.
But while as researchers we can bedeck ourselves with disciplinary badges,
being located in New Zealand is to recognise that you are at a distance from the
major clusters of researchers working in cognate areas. Indeed, in New Zealand
there is only a comparatively small number of researchers even in the more
expansive-style environmental history described above. Of course with distance
and small numbers comes a certain freedom to select what to engage with from
mainstream historical geography and environmental history. To what extent are
my historical geography concerns grounded on fundamental subdisciplinary
intellectual building blocks; or, are they more an assemblage of disciplinary
predilections that are as much a matter of personal taste? This is a particular
problem where you are dealing with small numbers of researchers and find
yourself endeavouring to make a case that the historical geographers do it this
way and the environmental historians do it that way. Research conducted
along disciplinary lines can also reach out to bordering areas. For instance, in
a different context I contrasted historical and geographical approaches to
the study of World War I soldier settlement, while noting that this was not
entirely a matter of disciplinary boundaries; some historians produced richly
geographical accounts, and vice versa.7 The same applies to research into forest
history internationally, where some environmental historians from academic
history backgrounds have published in historical geography journals.8
7 Michael Roche, World War One British Empire discharged soldier settlement in comparative focus,
History Compass 9 (2011): 115.
8 Greg Barton, Empire forestry and the origins of environmentalism, Journal of Historical Geography
27(2001): 52922; Brett Bennett and Frederick Kruger, Ecology, forestry and the debate over exotic trees in
South Africa, Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2014): 100109.
150
Empire forestry and New Zealand

Although there is now a small New Zealand secondary environmental history
literature about forests and forestry, it is useful to position local developments
against a broader forest history backdrop. This can be done in a comparative
fashion as well as in British imperial terms, although some aspects fall beyond
these bounds and might be described under a global heading. In comparative
terms, New Zealand and Australia can be usefully studied. Both have similarly
timed histories as settler societies, though their forest endowments were quite
different, with New Zealand having a higher percentage of forest cover when
European settlement commenced. The forests themselves contrasted in numerous
ways, but one distinction of economic importance was the preponderance of
indigenous soft woods in New Zealand and hardwoods in Australia, around
which a reciprocal trade emerged. In both these countries, the expansion
of colonial land settlement had priority as a land use. Initial views about
inexhaustible forests gave way to timber famine concerns by the late nineteenth
century. This story is also one shared to some extent by the United States
and Canada. In both Australia and New Zealand, private tree-planting efforts
identified the potential of a number of exotic species, and state afforestation
efforts commenced in the late nineteenth century. Large-scale exotic plantation
of forestry also became a feature of South Africa, but on a different politicoeconomic trajectory to Australia and New Zealand.
To adopt an imperial focus involves considering how and when forestry
knowledge, officers, and materials all circulated around the Empire, especially
from the 1870s to the 1930s. Forestry in British India to varying degrees formed
the backdrop. A Madras forestry officer was brought to New Zealand in 1876 to
advise on the setting up of a forestry department. Later, in the early twentieth
century, Nancy-, Oxford-, and Edinburgh-trained foresters completed careers
that took them through various parts of the Empire, including Australia and
New Zealand. Although the first scientific forestry connections were between
India and New Zealand, where German and French ideas and practices were
used to illustrate the possibilities of forestry, progress was limited until the
early twentieth century. This was still the case when colonial forester David
Hutchins, who trained at Nancy and worked briefly in India before spending
the rest of his career in southern Africa, visited New Zealand in 1915 to report
on New Zealand forests.9 In southern Africa, Hutchins made his reputation
through exotic afforestation. In still comparatively well-forested New Zealand,
9 Michael Roche, Colonial Forestry at its Limits: The Latter Day Career of Sir David Hutchins in New
Zealand 19151920, Environment and History 16 (2010): 43154.
151
heinstead devoted his attention to another part of the foresters land management
portfolio, in advocating demarcation of indigenous forests and their long-term
sustained-yield management.
A backdrop to New Zealand debates were the differing interpretations of
forestry in nineteenth-century British India, where, for some environmental
historians, forestry was a set of imported and imposed French and German
practices. The countervailing position is that state forestry in India emerged
more distinctively out of exposure to local conditions and circumstances.10
Still further complicating the scene, for instance, is political scientist
James Scott, who in Seeing Like a State outlines the emergence of scientific
forestry in eighteenth-century Prussia and Saxony, paying close attention to
how revenue and timber volume produced a particular emphasis whereby
natural forests were managed until they came close to being plantations.
His more expansive point was one of how a strong focus on a small number
of factors made possible a high degree of control and manipulation, a point he
extended to the late twentieth century states control over broader areas such
as urban planning, rural settlement, and agriculture. While Scott is clear that
his forestry vignette is a metaphor for how state bureaucracies operate, his
acknowledgement that the history of scientific forestry is important in its own
right has been perhaps too readily overlooked.11 A consequence is that what
for Scott was a parable and a metaphor, for some has been read as a history of
German forestry, where forestry is inevitably understood as plantation-based.
Other influences and incidents were more global; for instance, Pinus radiata,
a native of California where it is known as Monterey Pine, attracted attention
in Australia and New Zealand in the aftermath of the mid-nineteenth century
gold-rush era as a candidate for large-scale afforestation efforts. Subsequently,
large areas were also planted in South Africa. Appreciating that exotic treeplanting efforts extend back to the nineteenth century makes it is all too easy,
but misleading, to conflate scientific forestry with exotic plantations in New
Zealand. In other locales, as Brett Bennett demonstrates, there is further scope
for actually looking more closely at production plantations as only part of the
lexicon of scientific state forestry.12
10 Cf. Greg Barton, Empire forestry and the origins of environmentalism, Journal of Historical Geography
27 (2001): 52922 and Ravi Rajan, Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Eco-Development 18001950 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
11 James C. Scott, Seeing like a State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 11.
12 Brett Bennett, The origins of timber plantations in India, Agricultural History Review 62 (2014): 98118.
152
New Zealand forestry historiography

New Zealands forest history can be interpreted with an emphasis on local
initiatives, for instance with regard to the development of a preservationist
sentiment or early tree-planting efforts, or else positioned within a wider
framework of the expansion of British imperial forestry, which itself was
slow to reach the white settler colonies of Australia and New Zealand; or
pursued with an eye to localglobal connections. While New Zealand on the
eve of large-scale European settlement in 1840 was in percentage terms more
forested than many other lands of overseas European settlement, it followed
a similar trajectory of giving primacy to agricultural and pastoral land uses.
Initial beliefs in the inexhaustibility of forest resources, as elsewhere, gave way
within two generations to concerns about a coming timber famine. The range
of introduced tree species and their growth rates attracted early attention and
were distinguishing features of the New Zealand context. In New Zealand, as
in Australia, forestry experts from British India advised on the implementation
of scientific state forestry, on lines ultimately derived from French and German
forestry practices mediated via India, albeit that little materialised out of
these early efforts.13 The successful establishment of forestry departments in
Australia and New Zealand had to wait until the first decades of the twentieth
century, by which time appointments, such as L. M. Ellis and F. E. Hutchinson
in New Zealand and Harold Swain in Queensland, meant that ideas from North
American forestry science were also incorporated into local practices.14 But for
most commentators, the distinguishing feature of forestry in New Zealand by
the 1930s was, put simply, the establishment of large-scale exotic plantations.
New Zealand historians specialising in environmental history, understandably
enough, have tended to see their topic entirely as a distinct sub-discipline of
history and have focused in some detail on the nineteenth century and the
decades up to about 1920.15 They have directed attention to environmental
anxiety and to the wider relationship between climate and settlement that
can usefully add to present-day debates about global warming.16 Their major
13 Graeme Wynn, Pioneers, politicians and the conservation of forests in early New Zealand, Journal of
Historical Geography 5 (1979): 17188.
14 Michael Roche, Latter day imperial careering: L. M. Ellisa Canadian forester in Australia and New
Zealand, 19201941, ENNZ: Environment and Nature in New Zealand 4 (2009): 5877; Greg Barton and Brett
Bennett, Edward Harold Fulcher Swains vision of forest modernity, Intellectual History Review 21 (2011):
13550.
15 James Beattie, Recent Directions in the Environmental Historiography of the British Empire, History
Compass 10 (2012): 129.
16 James Beattie, Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand, 18401941: Climate Change, Soil Erosion, Sand
Drift, Flooding and Forest Conservation, Environment and History 9 (2003): 37992; James Beattie, Climate
Change, Forest Conservation and Science: A Case Study of New Zealand, 18401920, History of Meteorology 5
(2009): 118, www.meteohistory.org/2009historyofmeteorology5/1beattie.pdf.
153
emphasis has been on the wanton destruction of the forest in the course of
European settlement. This theme can be further divided. There has been
research into the preservationist response to extensive and rapid deforestation.
Associated with this is scrutiny of the links between indigenous flora and fauna,
and a sense of colonial difference giving rise to the emergence of senses of
identity.17 Other work has tracked the felling to exhaustion of forest remnants,
but, by and large, historians have tended to pursue the settler response to a
looming timber famine in the form of exotic tree-planting.18
Environmental historians have, however, paid some attention to the Royal
Commission on Forestry of 1913. Paul Star suggests that its report condemned
native forest not to total destruction but to non-production status whereas until
this time, the European conservationist trend had been towards indigenous
production and integration with exotic production and exotic methods.19
James Beattie and Paul Star also venture that the Royal Commission added
weight to timber famine concerns so that to many foresters, it was therefore
logical to meet future timber needs through extensive planting of exoticsand
of Pinus radiata in particularrather than of natives.20 In contrast, historical
geographers Graeme Wynn and I have tended to examine legislative efforts, the
role of the state, and attempts to implement schemes for the management of
indigenous forests by professional foresters.21 Anticipating by a decade elements
of this present exercise, Wynn has also reappraised the role he originally
attributed to G. P. Marshs ideas in Man and Nature in leading to the passage
of the New Zealand Forests Act of 1874, now giving more weight to local
actors.22 Beatties Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and
17 Ross Galbreath, Displacement, conservation and customary use of native plants and animals in New
Zealand, New Zealand Journal of History 36 (2002): 3650; Paul Star, Native Bird Protection, National Identity
and the Rise of Preservation in New Zealand to 1914, New Zealand Journal of History 36 (2002): 12336.
18 Paul Star, Doomed Timber: Towards an environmental history of Seaward Forest, in Landscape/
Community: Perspectives from New Zealand History, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Judy Bennett (Dunedin:
University of Otago Press, 2005), 1729; Paul Star, Tree Planting in Colonial Canterbury, 18501890,
Environment and History 14 (2008): 56382; Paul Star, New Zealands Biota Barons:Ecological Transformation
in Colonial New Zealand, EHNNZ: Environment and Nature in New Zealand 6 (2011): 112; Paul Star, The
contribution of Henry Matthews to tree culture in New Zealand 1896 to 1909, in Australias Ever-changing
Forests VI: Proceedings of the Eighth National Conference on Australian Forest History, ed. Brett J. Stubbs, Jane
Lennon, Alison Specht, and John Taylor (East Lismore, NSW: Tankard Books, 2012).
19 Paul Star, Native forest and the rise of preservation in New Zealand (19031913), Environment and
History 8 (2002): 289.
20 James Beattie and Paul Star, State forest conservation and the New Zealand landscape: Origins and
influences, 18501914, in Landscape/Community: Perspectives from New Zealand History, ed. Tony Ballantyne
and Judy Bennett (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005), 40.
21 Graeme Wynn, Conservation and Society in Late Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, New Zealand
Journal of History 11 (1977): 12436; Graeme Wynn, Pioneers, politicians and the conservation of forests in
early New Zealand, Journal of Historical Geography 5 (1979): 17188; Graeme Wynn, Destruction under the
Guise of Improvement? The Forest 18401920, inEnvironmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Tom Brooking
and Eric Pawson (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002), 100116.
22 Graeme Wynn, On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in Environmental history, Environment and
History 10 (2004): 13351.
154
Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 18001920does, however,further

concern itself with forestry professionals and indigenous forests in an imperial
context.23
In 2002, the editors of Environmental Histories of New Zealand, Eric Pawson
and Tom Brooking, observed that they were overtly combining historical and
geographical approaches, further noting that the volume contained a wide range
of disciplines.24 These distinctions between history and geography with respect
to environmental history have become further blurred, for instance, in portions
of Beatties Empire and Environmental Anxiety.25
The temporal span of the work of the historians has been comparatively broad.
This has advantages in terms of understanding longer-term trends. There are,
however, implications in the choice of 1914 and/or 1920 as cut-off points for
much of this research, particularly in terms of how to link tree-planting in
the nineteenth century to the expansive plantations created by the state and
companies in the 1920s and 1930s. On this point our interpretations differ.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that by using 1914 as a break point, Beattie and Star
in State Forest Conservation and the New Zealand Landscape draw too direct
a connection between the Royal Commissions recommendations for increasing
state afforestation and the large-scale exotic plantation forests of the later
twentieth century.26 In so doing, pivotal episodes are lost sight of, including the
efforts of the eminent colonial forester David Hutchins to promote sustainedyield management of indigenous forests from 1915 to 1920. Ellis initially
shared this focus as Director of Forests, which continued in the efforts of the
New Zealand Forest Service in the 1940s to 1960s and culminated in the illfated beech scheme of the 1970s, later to reappear when the State Owned
Enterprise (SOE) Timberlands West Coast proposed to resurrect sustained-yield
beech forestry, but which was finally politically terminated in 1999. Little of
this sequence of events, I would suggest, flows from nineteenth-century treeplanting efforts.27
On a number of occasions I have argued that paying close attention to treeplanting and identifying forestry as exotic plantation forestry is to misread the
situation. Instead, I have suggested, the importance to professional forestry
of sustained-yield management of natural forests in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries needs to be kept to the fore. It was a core part of Ellis 1920
23 James Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and
Australasia, 18001920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
24 Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, Preface, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Melbourne:
Oxford University Press, 2002), xii.
25 Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety.
26 Roche, Colonial Forestry at its Limits.
27 Roche, The New Zealand Timber Economy 1840 to 1935.
155
report on forest conditions in New Zealand and amongst the principal tasks he
outlined for the newly established State Forest Service in 1921.28 It was also
a point made vigorously and repeatedly by David Hutchins in opposition to
popular and political enthusiasm for tree-planting as a solution to future timber
needs, during his residence in New Zealand from 1915 to his death in 1920.29
The examination of New Zealand as a singular case, as opposed to placing
New Zealand in some larger context, represents two contrasting research
strategies, both of which have a valid place. Some of the published writing
on the forest preservation theme in New Zealand seems to adopt the former
approach, while my more recent efforts in terms of colonial forestry represent
the other strategy. Links between forest preservation and nationhood in late
nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand are deftly addressed by
Paul Star and Lynne Lochhead in their chapter in Environmental Histories of New
Zealand, while I have more closely considered the manner in which professional
foresters spread across Australia and New Zealand in the early twentieth
century.30 That said, it is not simply a case of historians undertaking detailed
New Zealand-focused work and geographers working on a larger canvas; for
instance, my Forest Policy in New Zealand: An Historical Geography 18401919
tends to focus, largely though not entirely, on the local, while Beatties Empire
and Environmental Anxiety places forest conservation within a French, German,
Scottish and British imperial context.31
Since there is now, and has for some time been, some distance and differences
between my own viewpoint and that of the historians interested in
environmental history, I have decided to revisit some of my own assumptions
and interpretations about forest history in New Zealand, especially as they seem
to have limited purchase with environmental historians. More specifically, this
involves in detail at the place of afforestation in Ellis early statements about
state forestry in New Zealand, especially the period from 1920 to 1925.
28 Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives [hereafter AJHR], C3A (Wellington: Government
Printer, 1920).
29 Roche, Colonial Forestry at its Limits.
30 Paul Star and Lynne Lochhead, Children of the Burnt Bush: New Zealanders and the Indigenous Remnant,
18801930, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Melbourne:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 11935; Michael Roche, Forestry as imperial careering: New Zealand as the
end and edge of empire in the 1920s40s, New Zealand Geographer 68 (2012): 20110.
31 Michael Roche, Forest Policy in New Zealand: An Historical Geography 18401919 (Palmerston North:
Dunmore, 1987); Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety.
156
Ellis appointed as first Director of Forests, 1919

A protracted series of largely behind-the-scenes manoeuvres in which farmer
politician Sir James Wilson and Lands Department official E. Phillips Turner
figured prominently, in conjunction with a public discourse in which the Royal
Commission on Forestry of 1913 was prominent, paved the way for state forestry
in New Zealand. Official and popular writings by the eminent colonial forester
David Hutchins reinforced the case. Collectively these efforts led to the decision
to appoint a professionally trained forester to head a forests department that
was administratively separate from the Lands Department and responsible
for both indigenous forests and exotic plantations.32 World War I delayed any
progress, but in 1919 the position, along with that of Chief Inspector, was
advertised in the United Kingdom. There were nineteen applicants for the
Directors position, from which the London-based appointments committee
comprising Lord Lovat (a Scottish estate owner, a member of the Interim
Forestry Commission, and later chairman of the British Forestry Commission
(191927), R. L. Robinson, an Australian Rhodes Scholar and Oxford forestry
graduate (1909), who was later technical commissioner and eventually long-time
chairman of the British Forestry Commission, and A. G. Herbert (a New Zealand
High Commission secretarydecided to shortlist only two men, L. M.Ellis and
A. A. DunbarBrander.
Ellis (18871941) at the time was an Advisory Forestry Officer for the Board of
Agriculture in Scotland as part of the Interim Forestry Commission, forerunner
of the Forestry Commission. During World War I, he had served in France as a
Captain in the Canadian Forestry Corps. Earlier, he had graduated with a BSc
in forestry from the University of Toronto, where the department was headed
by the influential Bernhard Fernow. Subsequently Ellis was employed by the
forestry department of Canadian Pacific Railways until he enlisted in 1916.33
Brander (18771953) was a Deputy Conservator of Forests in the Imperial Forest
Service based in the Central Provinces of British India. He had graduated near
the top of his class at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill, the
forestry section of which was headed by Dr William Schlich, an ex-Inspector
General of Forests in India. Thereafter, Brander completed the standard practical
courses in French and German forests. With twenty years of forestry service in
32 Roche, The New Zealand Timber Economy 1840 to 1935; Michael Roche, McIntosh Ellis 18871941,
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 4 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998): 15758; Michael
Roche, The Royal Commission on Forestry 1913 viewed from 2013, NZ Journal of Forestry 58 (2013): 711;
Michael Roche, Edward Phillips Turner: The Development of a Forest Consciousness in New Zealand 1890s
to 1930s, A forest conscienceness: proceedings 6th National Conference of the Australian Forest History Society
Inc., 1217 September 2004, August, Western Australia, ed. Mike Calver (Rotterdam: Millpress, 2005), 14353.
33 Michael Roche, Latter day imperial careering.
157
India, including special expertise with working plans, he had been advised on
health grounds to seek employment in a temperate climate. Brander had applied
to the Interim Forestry Commission and for the Directors position in New
Zealand with strong supporting references, including one from the Inspector
General of Forests for India which attested to his technical ability.34 His longerterm reputation rested though on his book on wild animals of central India.35
At all events, Brander was unable to delay his return to India until after
the interviews, and the panel of Lovat, Robinson, and High Commissioner
Thomas MacKenzie were of the view that Ellis was excellently fitted for the
position.36 In his application, Ellis stressed that he would be able to solve the
forest problems in New Zealand: this was a declaration of professional as well
as personal confidence. These forest problems, he described in terms of forest
utilisation, stabilisation of forest industries, forest renewal on unproductive
lands, the raising of a national forest consciousness, improved forest revenues,
tax reform for private forestry, forest land classification, and research.37 Indeed,
the imprint of this list was evident in the forest policy directions he identified
in 1920 (see below). Regarding themselves as expert natural resource managers,
foresters such as Ellis shared some core professional values and skills, and
advocated similar solutions to forestry problems. Thus, the extent to which the
New Zealand environment, both social and biophysical, reshaped his forestry
thinking is pertinent to some wider understanding of imperial forestry in the
inter-war period.38
French forestrys impression on Ellis

During World War I, Ellis served in France with the Canadian Forestry Corps,
and this first-hand exposure to long-established French forestry measures
strengthened his appreciation of certain forestry principles and practices.
These included the authority of French forestry officials even during wartime
to control harvesting levels; the mixed farm and forest landscapes that matched
land quality with land use, and which included populations of deer; and
the realisation that French foresters played a wider role than just supplying
34 Archibald Brander, Working plan for the forests of the Bnajar Valley Reserve, [South]-Mandla Forest
Division, Northern Circle, Central Provinces, for the period 19041935 (Allahabad: Pioneer Press, 1906);
Archibald Alexander Dunbar Brander, Application for Director of Forests, F W1921 1, Archives New Zealand,
Wellington.
35 Archibald Brander, Wild Animals in Central India (London: Arnold, 1923).
36 Thomas McKenzie to William Massey, 18 November 1918, SSC 5/15597, Archives New Zealand,
Wellington.
37 L. M. Ellis, 17 November 1919, SSC 5/15597, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.
38 Roche, Forestry as imperial careering.
158
wood from state forests.39 As New Zealand forester Peter McKelvey later noted:
It would have been a most insensitive forester who failed to appreciate the
technical and aesthetic qualities in the managed beech forests of Normandy.40
Ellis admired the sustained-yield practices of French forestry, and in McKelveys
view, Ellis proposals of 1920 for a new [New Zealand] Forest Service was
based on exemplars which included the French system.41 My own somewhat
dissenting view is that Schlichs Anglo-German forestry ideas were at least as
important in the choices Ellis finally put forward.
The point on which McKelvey and I agree is that sustained-yield management
and multiple use of forests was at the core of Ellis vision for the new forest
department. Ellis would have been introduced to these ideas earlier, during
his professional training under Fernow at Toronto, but he would not have
seen them in mature application until he reached France. McKelvey also makes
the point that timber scarcity concerns had underpinned initial German and
French forestry practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but that
these ideas did not transfer that well to North America in the later nineteenth
century, with the result that at the embryonic stage of American forestry [there]
was too much emphasis on timber production without sufficient consideration
of the costs involved, and that aesthetic forest conservation was overlooked.42
I agree about the selective transmission of forestry practices to New Zealand,
while noting that Bennett has added to the complexity of the situation by
posing questions about what French or German forestry actually meant in
nineteenth-century British India.43 In my opinion, McKelvey underplays the
sudden concurrent appearance in the late nineteenth century in North America,
Australia, and New Zealand of deep concern about a timber famine.44
Forestry in Great Britainits impact on Ellis

After demobilisation, Ellis took a position as an Advisory Forestry Officer
with the Scottish Board of Agriculture. Forestry in Britain was acknowledged,
particularly in the aftermath of World War I, as lagging far behind that of France
39 John Jeannery, The Impact of World War I on French Timber Resources, Journal of Forest History
22(1978): 22627.
40 Peter McKelvey, L. MacIntosh Ellis in France, New Zealand Journal of Forestry 34 (1989): 15.
41 McKelvey, L. MacIntosh Ellis in France, 16.
42 McKelvey, L. MacIntosh Ellis in France, 17.
43 Brett Bennett, A Network approach to the Origins of Forestry Education in India, 18551885, in Science
and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 18001970, ed. Brett Bennett and
J.Hodge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 6888.
44 Michael Roche, Pests, Pines and Fires: Large Scale Plantation Forestry in New Zealand, 18971955, in
Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton: Environmental Histories of the Global Plantation, ed. Frank Uektter
(Frankfurt: Campus, 2014), 16794.
159
and Germany. I have not previously posed the question of what Ellis might have
absorbed from his rather brief employment with the Board of Agriculture for
Scotland, and in retrospect ought to have, for arguably it had an impact on
his thinking about the future course of forestry in New Zealand. But in some
other ways it does not: New Zealand, for instance, never adopted a Forestry
Commission administrative structure. In my defence, I would observe that
James History of English Forestry, which I drew on at the time, while containing
a useful and concise summary of events leading to the Forests Act of 1919 and
the establishment of a Forestry Commission for the United Kingdom, as well
as its efforts to develop private and state afforestation and timber production,
and the difficulties encountered along the way, including a near-merger with
the Ministry of Agriculture in 1924, does not include any details about the
proposed scale of afforestation.45 The inability of Britain to provide for its own
timber needs had been driven home during World War I. Varied responses took
the form of a somewhat administratively independent Forestry Commission, the
organisation of Empire Forestry Conferences from 1920 to co-ordinate an empirewide forestry policy, the establishment of an Empire Forestry Association, which
published the Empire Forestry Journal (192246; thereafter the Empire Forestry
Review until 1962), and the establishment of an Imperial Forestry Institute at
Oxford University in 1924.46
The Acland Committee established the longer-term goal of creating timber
supplies in the United Kingdom sufficient to meet war-time requirements for
three years. Translated into planting targets, this equated to the state afforesting
1,770,000 acres of land previously unplanted (of which 1,180,000 acres)47
should be planted in 40 years [an average of 29,500 acres p. a.], and the whole
in 80 years.48 In addition to this, three million acres of private forests would
need to be retained and managed more productively. The Acland report also
proposed land purchases of 22,000 acres per year to provide most of the land
for planting.49 Although the planting programme did not fully eventuate, and
took place after Ellis had arrived in New Zealand, access to Forestry Commission
reports would have kept him apprised of its progress, and he heard first-hand
Robinsons account of it at the Empire Forestry Conference in Ottawa in 1923.
The scale of the British Forestry Commission plans can be compared to the more
modest response the Royal Commission on Forestry in New Zealand of 1913 to
45 N. D. James, A History of English Forestry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981).

46 Joseph Powell, Dominion over Palm and Pine: the British Empire Forestry Conferences 19201947,
Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007): 85277.
47 1 acre is approximately 0.4047 hectares.
48 Forestry Commission, First Annual Report of the Forestry Commissioners (London: His Majestys
Stationery Office, 1920).
49 Forestry Commission, Sixth Annual Report of the Forestry Commissioners (London: His Majestys
Stationery Office, 1925).
160
a projected timber famine by 1943.50 The latter recommended a new annual

planting target of only 6,415 acres, this still being an increase of two and a half
times the 191112 annual planting of 2,566 acres.
To what extent was the trajectory of the British Forestry Commission a model
for Ellis when it came to afforestation? This is a question I have not previously
addressed. The significance of a commission rather than ministry/department
model was also lost on me at the time. I now think it is reasonable to believe
that the Forestry Commissions proposed large-scale and long-term afforestation
plans lodged at the back of Ellis mind as a legitimate strategy.
Ellis in New Zealand

Ellis first task on arrival in New Zealand was to familiarise himself with
local conditions and then to prepare a report which discussed the possible
administrative structure of the department, the necessary legislative basis for
forestry, and future steps. Thereafter, Ellis in 1920 listed the main thrust of
forest policy in New Zealand under the following headings:
1. A simple forest act
2. A forest service
3. A forest development fund for development and demarcation
4. A progressive timber sales policy
5. Adequate facilities for technical education
6. State co-operation in private tree-growing
7. Administration of scenic reserves, national parks, and forested Crown land
by the forest service
8. A forest products laboratory
9. A survey and inventory of the forest soils of New Zealand
10. An economic survey of the timber industry and timber-using industries
11. Administration of fish, bird, and game resources by the forest service.51
Of these, numbers 7 and 11 were never achieved by the State Forest Service
or its successor the New Zealand Forest Service (194987), which also points
to the importance of the somewhat separate preservationist themes studied by
environmental historians in New Zealand. Number six would also seem to have
been influenced by Ellis prior experience in the United Kingdom.
50 AJHR, C12, 1913.

51 AJHR, C3A, 1920.
161
Previously, I have argued that Ellis gave central space to his timber famine
calculations, and that his other initiatives make greater sense when clustered
around this prediction of the Dominion being unable to meet its timber
requirements by 1965.52 Initial work on indigenous growth rates and regeneration
pointed to problems in this area as well. Even so, I argued, Ellis early responses
were quite in keeping with prevailing forestry canons of sustained-yield
management of natural forests.
He initially proposed afforestation as part of a suite of forestry initiatives to
supply regional timber needs. The acreage planted by the State Forest Service
amounted to 1,381 (1921), 3,408 (1922), 2,862 (1,923), 7,207 (1924), and 11,051
(1925); that is, the Royal Commission on Forestrys recommended planting
target was not reached until 1924. Writing to The Gum Tree, the magazine of
the Australian Forestry League, in 1924 Ellis referred to lifting annual planting
rates from 7,400 acres to 9,00010,000 acres p. a. with the establishment in a
year of two of a 20 thousand acre planting programme per year.53 In responding
to Ellis statement about plantation forestry in New Zealand at the 1923 Empire
Forestry Conference, R. L. Robinson observed that afforestation operations in
the United Kingdom approach pretty closely those described by Mr Ellis, except
the conditions in New Zealand appear to be easier.54 This linking of the United
Kingdom and New Zealand tends to reinforce the interpretation that the former
offered a partial model for Ellis.
But, after 1925, Ellis mapped out a new pathway for exotic afforestation in
NewZealand. Against the backdrop of timber famine, reinforced by the results
of the National Forest Inventory of 192123, problems in finding the key to
unlock the problems of indigenous regeneration, the speed of growth achieved
by various exotic tree species, andcriticallythe availability of areas of
flat Crown land not wanted for agriculture, Ellis unveiled in 1925 a bold new
planting scheme of 300,000 acres within 10 years (though at an average of
30,000 acres p. a. it was still of the same order of magnitude as Acland had
proposed for the United Kingdom). This I have previously interpreted as a
calculated risk, whereby Ellis, in keeping with his daring nature, responded
expansively and beyond the narrower confines of his professional training
to propose such an expansive planting boom.55 Now, I would seek to qualify
somewhat thisposition.
52 Roche, The New Zealand Timber Economy 1840 to 1935, 304.

53 L. MacIntosh Ellis, Forestry in New Zealand, The Gum Tree 8 (1924): 19.
54 Ronald L. Robinson, Great Britain, in Second British Empire Forestry Conference 1923 Proceedings and
Resolutions with Brief Descriptions of Tours (Ottawa: F. A. Acland, Printer to the King, 1927), 129.
55 Roche, Latter day imperial careering.
162
Ellis early views about afforestation in

NewZealand
Ellis vigorously promoted the case for state forestry in print, but more usually
through addresses before a range of sometimes sceptical farming interestgroups. Afforestation was not his initial concernrather it was the bigger issue
of a coming timber famine. Shortly after his arrival, Ellis addressed the A. & P.
Conference and led off by praising the afforestation effort:
Nowhere else in the world will be found such a magnificent mass of man-made
forests. It is a wonderful achievement, and one that every citizen might well be
proud of, and should see, for it represents sustained effort and great faith. To the
Lands and Survey administration of the government is due to a large extent the
credit for the formation of the great forest aggregation.56
He then turned to the pressing problems of world timber supply and the need
for New Zealand to solve this problem or risk being dependent on imports,
then passed on to the more politically challenging areas of the provisional
state forests (areas Sir Francis Bell had recently removed from availability as a
matter of course for land settlement), to protection forestry, and to improved
efficiency in the sawmilling industry (which might have resulted in increased
timber prices, as the State Forest Service charged more for milling rights).
Hecouched his arguments in terms of the effective utilisation of all land areas
and emphasised that forestry was not in competition with other land uses,
though the demarcation line between the two was not fixed and immobile.57
But, at this point, as far as afforestation effort was concerned, he restricted
himself considerably to the view that co-operative profit-sharing arrangements
would underpin future individual private and local-body planting, and that
a more equitable system of forest taxation (citing American precepts) would
encourage individual afforestation. The British Forestry Commission, it is worth
remembering, also envisaged that local authorities and private plantings in
the 192030 period would amount to 110,000 acres, or 73 per cent of the land
afforested by the state.58
In 1921, writing for a farming audience, Ellis argued that the primary objective
of government forest policy was continuity of timber supply at reasonable prices,
and the protection and utilisation of forests. Inches Campbell Walker, a shortlived appointee as Conservator of Forests in New Zealand in the 1870s, had
56 L. MacIntosh Ellis, Forestry, in New Zealand Forestry League Annual Report and Proceedings (Wellington:
New Zealand Forestry League, 1920), 15.
57 Ellis, Forestry, 17.
58 Forestry Commission, First Annual Report of the Forestry Commissioners (London: His Majestys
Stationery Office, 1920), 15.
163
made virtually the same remarks.59 However, while giving centre stage to the
protection of indigenous forest capital, Ellis did venture that state plantations
ought to produce 10 per cent of his predicted thousand million superficial foot60
timber consumption within a generation, of which private indigenous forests,
as well as wood-lots and imports, would constitute 30 per cent.61
From almost his first acquaintance with New Zealand he was also prepared to
relax some of his ideas about forestry practice:
[i]t is generally accepted in professional circles that timber-growing is the proper
function of the State, but in New Zealand an exception may be made to this
general rule. The extraordinarily long growing seasons and the remarkably
sustained performance of many exotic trees result in really wonderful returns.
Where else in the world are better wood-yields obtained than here, where
from 75,000 to 200,000 superficial feet are secured for a thirty-year rotation of
Pinusinsignis?62
Thus, beyond the efforts of the state, private tree-growing was, in his view,
asound and remunerative business.63 Indeed, he regarded the private sector as
having an important role in satisfying future timber demand, which he put at
150,000 to 200,000 acres of plantations.64 But, his next sentences, in the light
of subsequent events, are especially interesting: is it possible to induce the
establishment of this big cumulative area within a generation? It is well worth
trying for.65 To achieve this goal, the State Forest Service would need to provide
demonstration areas, education, instruction, and inexpensive growing stock.
In 1922, he still advocated creating a self-supporting timber supply basis by the
reasons utilisation of our God-given forest resources, though he did see a place
for the dedication to Tree-farming of all forest-bearing Crown lands chiefly
valuable for forestry.66 In addressing the New Zealand Forestry League, an
elite, special-interest group that had agitated for the creation of a separate forest
department, he spoke of protection and production forestry, a state planting
effort of about 3,000 acres p. a., and efforts to encourage private tree-planting.
59 Inches Campbell Walker, On State Forestry: Its Aim and Object, Transactions and Proceedings of the New
Zealand Institute 9 (1877): 187203.
60 One superficial foot (colloquially termed a super foot) was a board the equivalent of 12 x 12 x 1 and
equal to 0.0236 cubic metres. In North America the term board foot was used instead of superficial foot.
61 L. MacIntosh Ellis, Forestry in New Zealand, NZ Journal of Agriculture 22 (1921): 88.
62 Ellis, Forestry in New Zealand, 88. At this time Pinus radiata was still termed Pinus insignis in New
Zealand.
63 Ellis, Forestry in New Zealand, 89.
66 L. McIntosh Ellis, Forestry Facts, The Forest Magazine [New Zealand] 1 (1922): 6.
164
At this point, prior to the availability of the results of the National Forest
Inventory, the main emphasis was still on effective control and management of
indigenous forests.
In 1924, before the conference of the New Zealand Farmers Union, Ellis
summarised progress in state forestry in New Zealand by reference to the tasks
he had outlined in 1920. He also spoke on changes to land tax recommended by
the Royal Commission on Land and Income Tax which would stimulate private
afforestation. More important, though not overstated, was his announcement of
summary data from the National [indigenous] Forest Inventory which confirmed
that annual consumption was in excess of the annual growth increment and
would result in exhaustion in 35 to 40 years (195964).67
But at some point around 192425 Ellis changed tack, now putting more
energy into afforestation; in a special interview for New Zealand Life entitled
NewZealandThe Timber Farm of Australasia, he extolled, with unintended
hyperbole, the ideal soils of the great Inland Empire of the pumice lands, the
speed and volume of wood growth, low fire risk, and wider market possibilities
thinking especially of Australia, perhaps informed by his attendance at the
1923 Empire Forestry Conference.68 It is of note that at this point, he was still
advocating not only Pinus radiata, but also Ponderosa Pine, Corsican Pine,
Douglas Fir, redwoods, other unspecified pines, and Macrocarpa as species for
use in afforestation. He also admitted to a new influence on his thinking:
[w]ith the possible successful establishment of a pulp and paper industry a new
market for coniferous softwood intermediate fellings will be available. I was
recently informed by the best of paper making authority that that day is near
athand.69
The individual in question was William Adamson, representative of the British

paper-making machinery firm Walmsley & Co. On a visit to Australia and New
Zealand, Adamson fired Ellis with the possibilities of growing plantation forests
in New Zealand for a future pulp and paper industry; remember that at this time
it was unknown if Pinus radiata would be suitable for papermaking. Thereafter,
Ellis, while not disavowing the centrality of sustained-yield management of
indigenous forests and the role of protection forestry, became more interested
in the extended possibilities of exotic afforestation work in New Zealand.
This included the afforestation of formerly cut-over forest and, significantly,
other lands not suitable for agriculture.
67 L. McIntosh, Ellis, State Forestry in New Zealand, New Zealand Life and Forest Magazine 3 (1924): 9.
68 L. MacIntosh Ellis, New ZealandThe Timber farm of Australasia, New Zealand Life 4 (1925): 7.
69 Ellis, New ZealandThe Timber farm of Australasia, 7.
165
1925: A 300,000-acre planting boom announced

In 1925, in reviewing five years State Forest Service activity, Ellis struck a
very positive note, but did acknowledge that kauri was nearly exhausted, that
kahikatea would last twenty years, and rimu supplies about 40 years.70 On the
basis of some quite detailed calculations about future timber consumption,
he predicted virgin softwood resources would be exhausted by 196570.71
Tosome extent this was an admission of defeat over sustained-yield management
of the indigenous forests, though elsewhere Ellis suggested it was a matter of
searching for the key to natural regeneration and of using plantations as a
source of timber until the former was understood and incorporated into State
Forest Service indigenous forest management practices. But his response was
undoubtedly bold: at present [1925] there are 63,000 acres of State plantations.
It is recommended that this area be increased to 300,000, formation to be completed
by the year 1935 [original italics].72 If evenly distributed across the 10-year
period, this amounted to 30,000 acres p. a., or three times the amount of planting
that Ellis had previously contemplated.
Ellis was planning a threefold increase in the annual planting rate, but this
self-assurance was not entirely without foundation. The efforts of nineteenthcentury tree-planting enthusiasts, and the more systematic efforts of the
Forestry Branch of the Lands Department (18971919) which established 63,000
acres of state plantation, had shown that Pinus radiata grew very rapidly in
New Zealand and was suitable for other than just fruit crates, as was originally
thought. Ellis also had the example of some afforestation companies planting
in the central North Island after 1923, even though he remained sceptical
about some of their claimed growth rates and harvest predictions. He asked the
Conservator of Forests for Auckland to provide him with detailed information
about the new afforestation companies set up after 1924, asking that immediate
action be taken against extravagant statements.73 The State Forest Service had
also managed to markedly reduce the cost of establishing plantations from 8 to
9 per acre to less than 2 by 1923.74 This point was important as it overcame one
of the classic reservations of foresters, such as Schlich, about placing too much
emphasis on exotic afforestation. Pinus radiata seed was readily procurable, and
likewise, crucially, there was flat Crown land available that was easy to plant
and not sought after for pastoral farming, in the form of the cobalt-deficient
70 AJHR, C3, 1925, 7.

71 AJHR, C3, 1925, 7.
72 AJHR, C3, 1925, 7.
73 Ellis to Conservator of Forests, Auckland, 23 July 1924. Private Afforestation companies General 1924
1929. BAAX A457 1124 b 29/1/0/ Part II, Archives New Zealand, Auckland.
74 AJHR, C3, 1925, 5.
166
bush-sick lands of the central North Island. One consequence of this was the
concentration of planting effort at Kaingaroa State Forest, which grew to 329,065
acres gross area by 1934, and comprised 55.1 per cent of state plantations.75
Some sense of the extent to which Ellis was departing from mainstream
forestry tenets can be gauged from the reaction of foresters in New Zealand
(and Australia) for the Empire Forestry Conference in 1928. The delegates
from across the Empire toured the country in OctoberEllis had resigned in
March. The Report of the Committee on New Zealand stressed the importance
of extending silvicultural research in indigenous forests while noting the lack
of forward planning as far as exotics were concerned past 1935.76 The latter
was required to provide a regular series of age classes and ensure the working
of the plantations on a sustained yield basis.77 Furthermore, it was obvious
that thinnings are urgently required and that these might ultimately be used
for pulpwood.78 There was also concern over insect or fungal damage, and the
threat posed by fire.
Ellis eventually informally suggested a five million-acre plantation estate
being the amount of forest-bearing land not suitable for pastoral farming.
Hisannouncement of an expanded planting effort in 1925, while much smaller
still, represented a new scale and direction for the State Forest Service, one that
was the source of some criticism from foresters, who inspected the state forests
in the course of the Empire Forestry Conference in 1928. This is the important
point of difference between the environmental historians and me. Even if it
appeared at a national level that the State Forest Service was just following
along the lines suggested by amateur tree-planters since the nineteenth century,
this was not actually the case; indigenous forest management came back onto
the political agenda from 1915 to 1925. Thereafter, the afforestation initiative,
particularly as Pinus radiata became the dominant tree species, was one that
departed somewhat from the European forestry script.
Another appointee as director of forestry:

Acounterfactual forestry narrative
Ellis was both a colourful personality and a compelling advocate who brought
a particular bundle of professional forestry training and experience to bear in
New Zealand (some of which he later modified in the light of local experience,
75 AJHR, C3, 1934, 6.
76 Empire Forestry Conference, Summary Report, Resolutions and Reports of Committees. Appendix 3,
NewZealand (Canberra: H. J. Green, Government Printer, 1928), 35.
77 Empire Forestry Conference, Summary Report, Resolutions and Reports of Committees, 36.
78 Empire Forestry Conference, Summary Report, Resolutions and Reports of Committees, 36.
167
for instance over forest grazing and forest game). If he had not been appointed
but instead the other short-listed candidate Dunbar Brander had taken up the
position, what might forestry in New Zealand have looked like? The following
paragraphs identify a possible trajectory for forestry in New Zealand with
Brander as Director of Forests.79 Even if Brander had not accepted the position,
it seems likely that, with any interview process being held by the New Zealand
High Commissioner in London assisted by the British Forestry Commission staff,
an alternative successful appointee would most likely have been in the classic
British colonial forestry type. Thus, a forester would typically have graduated
BA, DipFor (Oxon.) and have done a finishing tour of German or French forests,
before joining one of the colonial forest services, most likely in India, and
working up the ranks to conservator.
As Director of Forests in New Zealand his report on forest conditions in New
Zealand would have been similar in many respects to Ellis, but with some
differences in emphasis.80 For instance, he might have favoured a Forestry
Commission administrative model, one that Ellis also considered, but set aside.
This had been adopted in Victoria and New South Wales, but while a committee
of independent expert natural resource managers making decisions about
allowable cuts in the national interest without regard to political expediency
rested well with the colonial forestry mentality, it did not play out so well in
settler states, such as Victoria. A frustrated Owen Jones departed in 1925 after
five years as chair of the Victorian Forestry Commission to join New Zealand
Perpetual Forests, while in Western Australia, even in the absence of a commission
structure, the autocratic and inflexible Conservator of Forests, C. E. Lane Poole,
clashed so badly with politicians that he resigned his position.81 In any case in
New Zealand, Phillips Turner, virtually the sole advocate for forestry within
the public service, was a long-serving bureaucrat who by temperament and
outlook would have favoured the departmental model for forestry. Sir Francis
Bell, the Commissioner ofthe present day equivalent of Minister forState
Forests also preferred the departmental model and the unusual arrangement
imposed on Ellis, whereby he was Director of Forests on a three-year renewable
contract responsible to the Cabinet and not part of the permanent public
service, with a Secretary of Forestry, a position filled by Phillips Turner, as
79 Archibald Dunbar Brander retired as Conservator of Forests in the Central Provinces of India in 1923.
Thereafter he took over as factor of the Pitgaveny estate, Scotland, which had passed to his elder brother.
Thisinvolved the management of forests and plantations, but marked the end of his time as a professional
forester. His Wild Animals in Central India went through a number of editions and he continued to make
shorter contributions to the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society into the late 1920s. Dunbar Brander
shares a chapter with his brother James in Michael Branders The Big Game Hunters (New York: St Martins
Press, 1988).
80 Mary Sutherland was the first woman forestry graduate in the British Empire in 1916.
81 John Dargavel, The Zealous Conservator: A Life of Charles Lane Poole (Crawley, WA: University of Western
Australia Press, 2008).
168
the administrative head. This model would doubtless have remained in place,
regardless of appointee. It was, however, still an administrative model supported
by SirWilliam Schlich, the doyen of imperial forestry.
In some areas Director X would probably not have matched the quality of Ellis
solutions, for instance regarding fire control.82 In other respects, the emphasis
would have been different. Director X would arguably have:
been less dramatic in defining a timber famine by 1965
used the 1913 Royal Commission on Forestrys revised planting targets, and
those of the British Forestry Commission, to propose a more limited planting
programme to be undertaken over a much longer period of time
continued planting a wide range of exotic timber species
persisted with departmental efforts to grow indigenous timber trees in
plantations (French foresters were planting on two hundred-plus year
rotations)
have regarded thinning and pruning as an essential part of the creation of
the plantation forest estate (thus also creating options for a small-scale local
industry based on posts, poles, and firewood)
have thought in terms of timber demand and persisted with the idea of
regional timber supply forests, especially in treeless regions (something Ellis
moved away from after 1925)
have looked at replanting suitable areas of cut-over indigenous forest with
indigenous timber trees
have interplanted exotic timber trees in some indigenous production forests
have not concentrated so much of the planting effort on the Kaingaroa plains
have given more attention to attempting to implement sustained-yield
management of indigenous forests
have promoted the small core of professionally trained foresters in due course
to senior administrative positions
have supported university forestry education in New Zealand (as did Ellis).
The last two are not unimportant considerations. A. D. McGavock, the Director
of Forests (193238), a shrewd public servant but without any professional
qualifications, was hostile to the proposition that there was any need for forestry
graduates in the State Forest Servicethis set-back for forestry may have been
avoided. This also poses the question of whether A. R. Entrican, who was a
dominant figure in the forestry sector as Director of Forests 193961, and an
82 Helen Beaglehole, Fire in the Hills: A History of Rural Fire-fighting in New Zealand (Christchurch:
Canterbury University Press, 2012).
169
Ellis appointee, would ever have been employed as Forest Engineer in 1921 by
Director X. With an ounce of luck Director X may also have favoured one site
and the flawed, underfunded two-school model born of provincial jealousies
inherent in the University of New Zealand system might have been avoidedbut
probably not, such was the provincial division among the university colleges.83
What would this have meant for the appearance of forestry in New Zealand?
Arguably the down-stream significance would have been considerable.
Forinstance, the pulp and paper industry would likely have developed earlier
as an entirely private-sector initiative on the part of Whakatane Board Mills Ltd.
and New Zealand Forest Products. The state plantations would have been more
widely distributed and have contained a much wider range of exotic species
that supported smaller regional sawmilling industries. It follows that there
would have been a much smaller Kaingaroa Forest for the state to sell off the
cutting rights to in the 1990s. Timber famine concerns may have reappeared in
the immediate post-war period when the tensions between timber for housing
and the sustained-yield targets would still have been compromised. It is also
likely that a conflict between foresters and environmentalists would have gained
expression sooner, possibly before World War II. The Waipoua kauri forest
controversy was a defeat for sustained-yield forestry in 1949; this alternative
scenario envisages earlier efforts by the foresters to achieve regeneration of
indigenous forests and implement sustained-yield management. This might have
seen a much earlier attempt to implement sustained-yield management of beech
forests on the West Coast. It may also have produced larger-scale experiments
of limited success in the remaining podocarp forests. The impetus that the
Waipoua forest campaign generated could have escalated into a contest over the
remaining indigenous forest. A political solution would have been especially
vexed if the New Zealand Forest Service had not, by this time in this alternative
scenario, planted sufficient exotic timber to meet domestic needs.
Conclusion
I would still cling to my earlier position that Ellis during his time as Director
of Forests believed in the place of the state in the production and protection
of forests and, in the long term, the provision of forest products, whereby
sustained-yield management of natural forests remained central. The 300,000acre planting boom was a bold measure, initially intended to allay timber famine
fears and provide time for the natural regeneration of indigenous forests to be
understood, though I would now concede the idea of large-scale afforestation
83 Michael Roche and John Dargavel, Imperial Ethos, Dominions Reality: Forestry Education in NewZealand
and Australia, 19101965, Environment and History 14 (2008), 52343.
170
was not so far outside the forestry canons as I had earlier believed (viz. the
example of the British Forestry Commission), albeit on a reduced scale and over
a longer time span, and with a different rationale. That said, Ellis was able to
push ahead with such a grand afforestation project because suitable Crown land
was available and crucially because the cost of planting per acre had been hugely
reduced, which was a departure from the situation in Great Britain, thus also
overcoming one of the orthodox forestry objections to large-scale afforestation.
It was not plantation forestry per se, but the large planting target to be achieved
in a decade that was especially notable. That so much of the planting effort took
place at Kaingaroa, which was originally conceived to reach only 80,000 acres but
expanded to 145,963 acres by 1930 is also worthy of attention.84 Also significant
was the large-scale planting of Pinus radiata rather than a familiar European or
North American plantation forest species. That it was then unknown whether
Pinus radiata was really suitable for papermaking was also in keeping with
Ellis confidence. Ellis, incidentally, was fully aware of the difficulties he was
bequeathing to a subsequent generation of foresters by not having a full age
class distribution, but considered that it would be difficult to maintain political
support for a 30-plus-year planting regime. If the indigenous forests had readily
regenerated and been amenable to sustained-yield management, Ellis would
still have been fascinated by the possibilities of large-scale afforestation in
New Zealand, because trees grew so well and so quickly across the country,
land was available, and there were new long-term possibilities for a wood export
industry. The speed of growth particularly attracted his attention as it made
forestry an investment option within an individuals lifetimethough he was
thinking of farmers and small wood-lot owners, and not company plantations
but long-term thinking, indigenous regeneration, and sustained yield would
have remained central to his views.
The situation where secondary literature is now sufficient to allow revisionist
questions to be posed about the environmental history of New Zealand is to be
welcomed. My interpretation of state forestry in the first half of the twentieth
century has differed from that of the historians Beattie and Star. This has
prompted me here to reinterrogate some source material. In conclusion, this
leads me to continue to argue that the historians jump from nineteenth-century
tree-planting to twentieth-century afforestation underplays the commitment of
foresters to sustained-yield management of indigenous forests, albeit in a form
that was to be thwarted in many ways.
But on the other hand, I would now acknowledge that Ellis 192025
afforestation work used techniques and approaches similar to that of the United
Kingdom, and was favourably commented on by Forestry Commission officials.
84 AJHR, C3, 1930, 5.
171
Ellismotivation for, and planning of, the 300,000-acre planting boom of 1925
34 also departed more from the forestry canon than I had previously appreciated,
indicated by the reaction of the Empire foresters in 1928. Furthermore, Ellis also
developed a personal enthusiasm for exotic afforestation that was notable for its
scale and championing of the unproven Pinus radiata. But he actually departed
from New Zealand only three years into his planting programme, which was
taken to completion by his successors Phillips Turner and McGavock, neither of
whom was a professionally trained forester. Depression tree-planting schemes
also meant it exceeded the original target by around 25 per cent.
To some extent, my distance from the historians is a classic splitters versus
lumpers argument; here the environmental historians are conscious of
continuities, whereas my own position has been one that emphasises the
discontinuity between older-style forest preservation as conservation and
scientific state forestry, introduced to New Zealand by a new group of
professionally trained expert natural resource managers in the 1910s and 1920s.
Added to this is the situation where Beattie would likely position himself as
an historian of the nineteenth century, whereas my own interests have swung
rather towards the first decades of the twentieth century. One consequence of
this is that the transition years from the end of the long nineteenth century to
the short twentieth century, which are particularly important ones for forestry
in New Zealand, can fall somewhat between the grasp of both of us.
172
THOMAS POTTS AND THE FOREST

QUESTION: CONSERVATION AND
DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ZEALAND
IN THE 1860S
PAUL STAR
Research Associate, University of Waikato
Email: starmulq@gmail.com
Abstract
Environmental historians need to differentiate between the origin of forest concerns on
one hand, and the structuring of legislative responses on the other. The former began
at the local level and resulted mostly in tree-planting in the first instance. The latter
developed later, and drew not only on local realities, but also on American or European
precedents. In New Zealand in the 1860s, concern for the native environment was
primarily an aspect of concern for colonial development, and conservation of native
forests was primarily a counterpoint to exotic tree-planting.
The advent of native forest conservation in the Colony has been traced back to a
demand made in 1868 by Thomas Potts, that government consider the present
condition of the forests. This article closely examines the situation in the province
where Potts lived, in the decade before the New Zealand Forests Act of 1874, to
find out what sparked this kind of initiative. The American George Perkins Marshs
thinking, together with Australian legislative precedents, are confirmed as key external
influences upon how concern about forests and conservation was framed, but in
essence this concern was a local response to ongoing change in a local environment.
What Potts and others expressed in the 1860s was grounded in what they themselves
experienced: forest and fire, waste and shortage, development and opportunity.
By the 1870s, Potts doubted the effectiveness of legislative solutions and his response
to timber shortage focused more on exotic tree-planting than on saving existing forest.
This article affirms the importance, in a New Zealand context, of considering exotic
plantation alongside native forest conservation. Turning to the broader picture, the
evidence presented suggests that both local determinants and exotic tree-planting have
been understudied by environmental historians, while aspects of conservation more
readily associable with environmentalism and preservation may have been overstressed.
Keywords: conservation, tree-planting, colonial development, Thomas Potts,

colonial New Zealand.
173
Introduction
Something without precedent in New Zealand occurred in Parliament on
7 October 1868. Thomas Potts, the Member of the House of Representatives
(MHR) for Mount Herbert in Canterbury, moved: That it is desirable Government
should take steps to ascertain the present condition of the forests of the Colony,
with a view to their better conservation.1 This event is sometimes described as
though it ushered in conservation in New Zealand, starting a chain of events
which resulted in the protection of a considerable remnant of the natural
environment.2 Clearly, however, Potts motion did not just come into his head on
that October day. This paper examines the influences before 1868 which worked
upon him, and which were familiar enough to other MHRs for his motion on
the present condition of the forests to pass. Taking the examination a little
further, to 1870, we can better assess whether Potts outlook in the 1860s really
reflected some kind of proto-environmentalism.
In recent decades, environmental historians (particularly in America) have
unpicked the history of conservation. Along the way, the meanings of the
words conservation, environmentalism, and natural, all used in the above
paragraph, have been fiercely debated. Since the publication in 1995 of William
Cronons article on The Trouble with Wilderness in a collection engaged in
rethinking the human place in nature, we have even come to view nature as a
human construct, and to consider natural environments only natural in so far
as they are less unnatural than consciously built environments.3 In common
with all of his generation of European-born pioneers, Potts did not think in
these terms and under-appreciated the extent of changes that indigenous people
(Mori, in this case) had effected on their surroundings. He still described the
New Zealand environment (a word whose meaning has become equally subject
to rapid change) in terms of its natural history, as a slumbering wilderness,
only awakening in the nineteenth century from the silent trance of ages.4
1 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD) 7 October 1868: 188.

2 See, for instance, Simon Nathan, Conservation: A History: Voices in the Wilderness, 17691907, Te
Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 13 July 2012, www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/conservation-a-history/
page-3; David Young, Our Islands, Our Selves: A History of Conservation in New Zealand (Dunedin: University
of Otago Press, 2004), 7277.
3 William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness, or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, Uncommon
Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 6990.
4 T. H. Potts, Out in the Open: A Budget of Scraps of Natural History, New Zealand Country Journal
2(1878): 139. For the actual extent of pre-European Maori impact, see Atholl Anderson, A Fragile Plenty:
Pre-European Maori and the New Zealand Environment, in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of
New Zealand, new ed., ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 3551.
174
Thomas Potts and the Forest Question
In 1989, Roderick Nash underlined the qualitative difference between

environmentalism, as it emerged in the 1960s, and what used to be called
conservation.5 He saw the new environmentalism as an ethical approach
to nature, while the old conservation, as it was understood by the American
forester Gifford Pinchot in the 1900s (and by Potts in the 1860s), had demonstrated
an economic approach. If this insight is accepted, the difficulties inherent in
identifying nineteenth-century conservationists as proto-environmentalists
become more apparent, since it implies that these pioneers beat two very
different tunes at the same time. Yet, as an examination of Potts motives will
suggest, an early conservationist would not have viewed ethical and economic
approaches to the natural environment as two opposing poles. Nineteenthcentury conservation aimed to reduce waste by being economical in the use of
natural resources, and this was, arguably, profoundly ethical.
In the context of New Zealand environmental history at least, an attempt has
been made to distinguish between conservation, which encourages wise
use or sustainable management of protected indigenous ecosystems, and
preservation, which implies their immunity from any direct utilisation,
whether felling individual trees or harvesting limited numbers of native birds
or animals.6 In New Zealand after the early 1870sthat is, beyond where this
study endsthe idea of conservation was increasingly overlaid with glimmers
of this concept of preservation. Potts was in the vanguard in this respect, but
he has further significance because we have good evidence of how his attitude
to forests changed. Over a period of 34 years (185488) we are able to plot,
through his example, the origin and development of a preservationist approach.
This article provides a fresh look at what sparked that process, and at part
of the pictureexotic tree-plantingwhich has been under-studied since the
emphasis has been on those aspects of conservation more readily associable with
environmentalism and preservation.
New Zealands forest history was first examined in this light in an article published
by the Canadian historical geographer Graeme Wynn in 1977, which focused
on the parliamentary debate in 1874 on Premier Julius Vogels New Zealand
Forests Bill. According to Wynn, supporters of the bill accepted the evidence
of mans deleterious impact on nature in America and Europe and Vogels
perspective recognised the ecological and long-term benefits of conservation.
Wynn devoted only one paragraph to the debate on New Zealands forests
5 Roderick Frazier Nash, The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1989), 8.
6 Paul Star, Native Forest and the Rise of Preservation in New Zealand (19031913), Environment and
History 8, no. 3 (August 2002): 276. This differentiation also has its difficulties, not least because the two
words are often treated as synonymous: for instance, since 1987 responsibility for the preservation of New
Zealands indigenous ecosystems has rested with what is called the Department of Conservation.
175
before 1874, prompted by the urgings of a handful of settlers, including Potts,

and concluded that this was more effective in revealing the limited sympathy
for restraint and resource conservation in this pioneering society than it was in
achieving action to temper ecological disturbance.7
There are various points to raise about the kind of analysis initiated by Wynn.
Firstly, it was clearly not enough to deal with precedents for Vogels bill in a mere
sentence or twoanother historical geographer, Michael Roche, duly provided
much more of this background.8 Secondly, New Zealands forest history needed
firmer placing within an international contextand work by James Beattie
and other environmental historians has since started to fill this gap.9 Thirdly,
to consider opinions and forestry legislation from this period in such ecological
terms seems a problematic, and potentially misleading, approach, given that
the very term oecologie (or oecology or ecology) was only coined in German in
1866, did not appear in English until 1875, and is first found in a New Zealand
publication in 1899.10
Wynn stated that the American George Perkins Marshs recently published
and prescient evaluation of mans destructive impact on his environment11
influenced Potts and a few New Zealand settlers in the late 1860s, which is
certainly true, but what needs to be established is the place that this study, and
other overseas influences, occupied in the creation of a New Zealand approach
to forest conservation. It is with this in mind that the present paper looks at a
much fuller range of influences that were at work upon Potts during the 1860s,
several years before Vogel, most notably, turned his attention to the matter.
While the significance of Marsh and of Australian precedents is confirmed,
greater stress is given to the local context. This paper affirms the importance
of considering together exotic tree plantations and native forest, the drive to
develop and concern for the environment.
7 Graeme Wynn, Conservation and Society in Late Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, New Zealand
Journal of History 11, no. 2 (1977): 136, 133 and 125.
8 Michael Roche, Forest Policy in New Zealand: An Historical Geography, 18401919 (Palmerston North:
Dunmore Press, 1987); Michael Roche, History of New Zealand Forestry (Wellington: GP Books, 1990).
9 James Beattie and Paul Star, Global Networks and Local Environments: Forest Conservation in New
Zealand, 1850s1920s, British Scholar 3, nos. 12 (September 2010): 191218; James Beattie, Empire and
Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 18001920
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
10 Leonard Cockayne, A Sketch of the Plant Geography of the Waimakariri River Basin, Considered Chiefly
from an Oecological Point of View, Transactions of the New Zealand Institute 32 (1899): 95136.
11 Wynn, Conservation and Society, 125.
176
There was no typical New Zealand province: Canterbury, where Potts lived,
was in fact unusual in having so limited a forest resource. While Otago was also
short of timber, in most other places it was abundant.12 Nor was Potts typical
of his generation, although he did respond to events that other early European
settlers also experienced. His importance lies in the unusual amount of thought
he gave to the environmental context of settlement, with much of what he
wrote and said, in addition to records of what he did, surviving. It is, therefore,
rewarding to try to see things through his eyes. From this launching point, we
can consider more generally what other European settlers in New Zealand made
of, and wished to make of, their new country.
Thomas Henry Pottsto give a few biographical detailswas born in London
in 1824 and as a young man lived on his country estate near Croydon in Surrey,
with its 100 acres (40 hectares) of fields and woodland. At the age of 30 he
sold the estate and the familys gun-making business and sailed for Canterbury,
New Zealand. Here he established Hakatere, a cattle and sheep station by the
upper Rangitata River, which at its peak covered 81,000 acres (33,000 hectares).
Others managed Hakatere for him, while he, his wife, and their 13 children
resided within easier reach of Christchurch: near Lyttelton, on a freehold
property of about 600 acres (250 hectares). From this base, Potts served both on
the Canterbury Provincial Council and (as already mentioned) in New Zealands
House of Representatives. Increasingly, however, his home, his family, and his
garden, along with his natural history interests and his writing, took centre
stage. By the time of his death, in 1888, he had written close to 100 articles
and one book, Out in the Open (1882), which was the first substantial volume of
natural history published in New Zealand.13
Canterburys development
When Canterbury Association settlers, such as Potts, approached their
destination in the 1850s, their first views were of a landscape distinctly different
from most of the area they were to settle. To the east of the entrance to Lyttelton
Harbour were the mouths of Port Levy and Pigeon Bay, with the hills of Banks
Peninsula rising steeply above them. These parts of the Peninsula were hilly
and heavily forested. They promised an extensive supply of timber, but limited
flattish land suitable for arable farming. In contrast, the vastly larger expanse
12 Canterbury and Otago provinces, as first defined, included extensive forests on the western side of the
South Island. However, this timber resource was not readily accessible from the eastern side where most
human settlement occurred, and beyond which Canterbury and Otagos boundaries did not extend once
Westland gained full provincial status in 1873.
13 For a photograph of Potts, and further biographical details, see Paul Star, Tree Planting in Canterbury,
New Zealand, 18501910, Environment and History 14, no. 4 (November 2008): 56382.
177
of the Canterbury Plains was mostly flat and without trees. The early years
of the Canterbury settlement saw no lack of land convertible to agriculture,
but there were soon problems in sourcing sufficient timber for the provinces
development.
Having sailed into the harbour and to the port of Lytteltonwhich, given the
nature of the steep terrain immediately behind it, could never become a large
townthe settlers hastened to climb the Port Hills to view the land beyond.
This strenuous walk was no doubt undertaken by Henry Phillips (Potts fatherin-law) soon after he arrived in Lyttelton with his family, on one of the first
four ships sent out by the Canterbury Association, in December 1850. Thesame
ground would have been covered, using the Bridle Path, by Potts when he
arrived with his wife and their first three children, in 1854. Potts recalled in
1887 that,
[t]he summit attained, with a very short walk an excellent view of the great plain
was obtained, the universal brown tussock chequered here and there with large
dark patches, the woods of magnificent trees which now have been swept away
these many years.14
By 1854 Lyttelton had a population of about 800. Christchurch had fewer

peopleabout 600but geography determined that the future of the colony
depended upon the expansion of this rather dreary little village, described by
one historian as looking then more like an offshoot of the Wild West than of
the home counties.15 As the population increased and more settlers moved out
to Christchurch and its hinterland, it became imperative to somehow improve
the flow of people and goods between Christchurch and the port at Lyttelton.
The solution was to build a railway and tunnel through the Port Hills. This was
risky, since it depended on the latest geological knowledge and engineering
expertise, and financially on a high level of debt. The initial decision to
proceed was made by the members (MPCs) of the second Canterbury Provincial
Council when they passed the Railway Bill in April 1860. This approved a
proposal initiated and subsequently masterminded by the head of Canterburys
government: the superintendent, William Sefton Moorhouse.16
By this time Potts was well known. As a large runholder, he could afford to
serve as an MPC in Christchurch along with 25 other gentlemen, and he was
a supporter of the tunnel project.17 He had reason to be, since many of his
14 Old Times, Canterbury Times, 18 November 1887, 25.
15 G. C. Hensley in A History of Canterbury, vol. 2, General History, 185476, and Cultural Aspects, 1850
1950, ed. W. J. Gardner (Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1971), 5.
16 See W. H. Scotter, Moorhouse and the Tunnel Contract, 185763, in A History of Canterbury, vol. 2, ed.
Gardner, 77104.
17 Lyttelton Times, 25 April 1860.
178
interests, like those of his constituents in Port Victoria (Lyttelton Harbour),

required a journey from the Lyttelton side of the Port Hills to Christchurch.
Since early in 1858 he and his large family had lived in Governors Bay, on the
shores of Lyttelton Harbour, in a substantial house and property bought from
his friend and mentor, Moorhouse.18
As an MPC, Potts was one of those who, in May 1861, approved Moorhouses
choice of a Melbourne firm to take over the contract to construct the Lyttelton
to Christchurch railway, including the tunnel. The previous contract had
turned sour when the first firm involved sought to raise their price, but the
new contract, with Holmes and Co., still committed Canterbury to borrowing
240,500.19 Since the future of the colony depended on the ventures success,
once the new contract was signed there was a very strong incentive to shield
Holmes and Co. against any impediment to their completion of the task.
Once the Provincial Superintendent turned the first sod, work started on
the railway and tunnel in July.20 Fifteen months later, his wife Jane was at
the Heathcote (the northern or Christchurch) end of the tunnel for a further
ceremony, laying the first stone of the tunnel arch.21 By then, Holmes navvies
had removed rock from as far as 400 yards (365 metres) into the Port Hills on both
sides, but a further 2,038 yards (1,864 metres) still needed boring. Thetunnel
was not completed until five years later, in 1867. In 1862, the brickwork had
just been started, using bricks burnt in the valley and at Pigeon Bay on Banks
Peninsula. Pigeon Bay was also the anticipated source of timber for the project,
including railway sleepers.
Potts sailed from Lyttelton for England in March 1862 and did not return until
January 1863,22 so he missed the Heathcote ceremony. He needed to tie up the
loose ends of his financial affairs, but at least one attraction also drew Potts back
to England at this time. He had been deeply impressed by the Great Exhibition
of 1851; he was now able to visit Londons International Exhibition, which ran
from May to November 1862.
The 1862 exhibition included a New Zealand Court, in which merino wool from
Canterbury featured prominently. By this time wool had become the provinces
staple article of production and exportation.23 Perhaps the exhibits which most
struck Potts, however, were some splendid articles of furniture made of kauri
18 T. H. Potts, Diary, 20 February 1858.

19 Lyttelton Times, 18 May 1861.
20 Lyttelton Times, 20 July 1861.
21 Lyttelton Times, 1 October 1862.
22 Lyttelton Times, 8 March 1862 and 10 January 1863.
23 Lyttelton Times, 8 February 1862.
179
wood sent from Auckland, which were very highly valued indeed.24 Nelson
province, more immediately north of Canterbury, also displayed samples of
furniture made from native woods, the very names of which would make the
fortune of advertising upholsterers. Red manuka chairs, totara couches, and titree tables ought really to create a new sensation.25
Canterbury province possessed no kauri (Agathis australis), but there were
workable and durable woods among the podocarp species, such as totara
(Podocarpus totara), so well established on Banks Peninsula. Decades later,
Potts was still reflecting on the specimens of carving which enriched and
ornamented the New Zealand Court and lamenting the wood-carving industry
centred on a school of design which might have been [but never was] the fate of
such an eligible spot as Akaroa, the Peninsulas largest settlement.26
The fires of 1863

After attending the exhibition, Potts returned from England on 7 January 1863
with an enhanced appreciation of the value of the Peninsulas forests, visible
from his windows. Ten days later, young James Hay was having problems moving
his fathers cattle away from scrub on their property in Pigeon Bay. To drive
them out, he set fire to the wild Maori grass, which was as high as the knees
and just as dry as powder. Things got out of control, and the fire spread into
the forest on adjoining properties and thence across much of Banks Peninsula,
where it continued to burn for months. In particular, fire had reached the edge
of George Holmes Craigforth estate, a mile away, by early February and burnt
through a great deal of his bush. Some of the totara trees destroyed were six feet
thick. By the time fire got down to Holmes house, on 12 February, an estimated
500 acres (200 hectares) had been burnt over, containing about six million feet
of timber.27
In a Supreme Court hearing in August 1863, Holmes sought damages from
Ebenezer Hay (as the father of James) for the loss of his timber. Holmes lawyer,
William Travers, ably represented that the fire on his clients land had resulted
from James Hays actions, rather than from any other fires started in the same
period. Witnesses for the defence spoke of fires in the Mount Fitzgerald,
Port Levy, and Little River areas at the time, for it was common practice to
24 T. H. Potts, 7 October 1868, NZPD 14 (1868): 188.

25 Lyttelton Times, 7 May 1862.
26 T. H. Potts, Out in the Open, New Zealand Country Journal 10, no. 2 (1 March 1886): 89.
27 Lyttelton Times, 22 September 1863. Timber measurements are notoriously difficult to deal with. It is
unclear here whether the speaker (George Marshall) meant six million super (board) feet (14,160 cubic metres)
or six million running (lineal or linear) feet (2,044,800 metres).
180
carry out clearances or to induce nutritious new growth of grass by means

of burn-offs. Since farmers saw their future in terms of pasture rather than
native forest, the chance of a burn-off becoming a bush fire was not the most
important consideration. Never before, however, had the settlers on Banks
Peninsula witnessed fires as extensive as those of 1863. The jury decided for the
plaintiff, and Mr. Justice Gresson ordered Ebenezer Hay to pay Holmes 3,000
in damages.28
This was no ordinary court case. Its significance lay in the magnitude of the
damages awarded and the nature of the property that had been damaged: these
were points made when the case was recalled in Parliament in 1868. Furthermore,
the people involved were significant. The Hay family had been in Canterbury
for 20 years, as part of the small influx of Scots who arrived in advance of the
major Canterbury Association settlement of 1850. Ebenezer Hay and Captain
Sinclair had brought William Deans to Canterbury in their boat in February
1843, then their own families three months later.
While the Deans chose to live at Riccarton Bush on the plains, the Sinclairs
and Hays settled on the forested slopes of Pigeon Bay. In 1850, much of the
timber to build the new town of Lyttelton, including the totara piles for the
jetty, was sourced from the Hays property in Pigeon Bay.29 Although the Hays
as a family returned to prosperity after 1863 (and still farm in the Bay today),
Gressons ruling broke their patriarch. The sum of 3,000 was a very large one
to lose. Hay unsuccessfully appealed against the judgement in October 1863.30
In November, returning to Lyttelton over the Bridle Path after visiting his
solicitor in Christchurch, he fell down a bluff to his death.31
Shortly before the fires, the Hays neighbours, the Sinclairs, had sold out to
George Holmes and moved to Vancouver. The Lyttelton Times, reporting this on
29 October 1862, recognised its significance at once:
[t]he inhabitants of Banks Peninsula may be congratulated upon the purchase of
the estate of Craigforth in Pigeon Bay by Messrs Holmes and Co, the contractors
for the tunnel and railway, who are about to immediately establish two powerful
saw mills in the forest, which covers a very large area of land of many hundreds
of acres [this is] a fresh guarantee of the bona fide intentions of the railway
contractors to complete the great undertaking they have in hand[.]32
28 Lyttelton Times, 26 September 1863.

29 Gordon Ogilvie, Banks Peninsula: Cradle of Canterbury, 3rd ed. (Christchurch: Phillips and King, 2007),
8598.
31 Lyttelton Times, 5 December 1863.
181
The destruction, three months later, of a sizeable proportion of the timber

Holmes had intended to millboth directly for use on the railway, and indirectly
to sell to others to help his cash flowwas not just a blow to him; it must
also have threatened to stall, for a second time, the building of the Lyttelton to
Christchurch railway and tunnel. The decision to award substantial damages
to Holmes ensured that the project was not delayed by any unexpected dip in
Holmes capital.
But it was not just money that was scarce and had been lost; it was also,
irretrievably, timber. Yet enough remained on Holmes land for the main
project in hand, since by 1868 the thirty miles [48.3 km] of railway already
constructed in Canterbury was derived from that single forest. This was stated
by Holmes lawyer, Travers, who, like Potts, became a proponent of native forest
conservation.33
Unlike Travers, Potts appears to have had no direct involvement in the case
of Holmes v. Hay, though as one of the MPCs who had authorised the railway
contract with Holmes and Co he must have been particularly anxious for the
success of Holmes venture. A year later, Potts was a member of the special jury
of 12 at the Supreme Court hearing, again heard by Gresson, which considered
the case of Marshall v. (James) Hay. George Marshall was another landowner in
Pigeon Bay whose forests were destroyed in the 1863 fires, and a similar range of
evidence was presented to that in the Holmes case. This time, however, the jury
was not convinced that the damage to Marshalls forest could be clearly linked
to the fire originally lit by James Hay, so Marshall received no recompense.34
One can only wonder if the jurors felt that the Hays had been punished enough
already, or perhaps that Marshalls solvency was less important than Holmes.
For Potts, the whole sequence of events had a significance which only grew with
time. He, like Travers, referred in 1868 to the Pigeon Bay fire as one of a most
destructive character, adding that he had often seen Banks Peninsula covered
for weeks together, with thick and lurid smoke.35 The evidence of a tragic waste
was there before his eyes, but it was less clear how it could be prevented.
33 W. T. L. Travers, 7 October 1868, NZPD 14 (1868): 191.

34 The Press, 20 September 1863; Lyttelton Times, 21 September 1863.
182
Approaches to timber shortage

Given the continuing and accelerating need for timber in Canterbury, together
with the rapid depletion of the provinces remaining native forest, a worrying
situation lay ahead. Settlers alert to it envisioned three quite distinct ways in
which the problem of a timber shortage could be alleviated.
Firstly, timber might be imported from elsewhere, but this was a costly solution
for a young colony short of ready cash. It was a makeshift approach, already
relied upon for a large proportion of Canterburys needs. Potts would have been
well aware of both the demand for and supply of timber imported from other
provinces or other countries. Montgomery, Todhunter and Co., for instance,
imported 29,000 feet (68.44 cubic metres) of timber from Wellington, which
arrived at the Heathcote River on 12 January 1863, just before Pigeon Bay began
to burn. The firm sold not only totara from elsewhere in New Zealand and kauri
from Auckland, but also American shelving and Tasmanian palings.36 In all,
between 5 and 19 January, 61,500 feet (145.14 cubic metres) of timber from
Banks Peninsula (shipped from Akaroa) reached Christchurch, while 102,000
feet (250.72 cubic metres) was shipped from Wellington to the same destination.37
As a second approach to the shortage, more trees could be planted, which might
have provided a solution if only they had grown fast enough. I discuss this
later. Thirdly, it might have been possible to have exercised greater control
over the exploitation of native forests. This would have ensured not only a less
wasteful consumption of those trees removed, but also conservation of some
areas, so that at least some native timber would have remained available in the
long term. Conservation, in the nineteenth-century usage of the word, implied
a measured and (arguably) rational utilisation of forests, but not their complete
preservation against every kind of exploitation. It is for his early promotion of
the conservation of New Zealands forests, together with his later steps towards
more recent ideas of preservation, that Potts is most remembered.
Native forest conservation in Canterbury

before1868
Ever since his arrival in Canterbury, the wastage of the forest resource had upset
Potts. He was not alone in this. Indeed, his father-in-law condemned it at a
Colonists Committee meeting in January 1851, just three weeks after his arrival
36 The Press, 21 June 1862.
37 Lyttelton Times, 21 January 1863. These figures do not include 2,090 pieces of timber, and 2,000 palings
arriving at the Heathcote River from Picton on 19 January.
183
in New Zealand, when he addressed the subject of indiscriminate licences

granted by the [Canterbury] Association for cutting timber and complained
that the purchasers of land were injuriously affected by it.38 In 1856, Potts
had watched with some concern as men took timber and firewood near
Phillipss Rockwood Station at Hororata, about 50 miles (30 kilometres) west of
Christchurch. Hethought it would destroy much of the ornamental character
of Rockwood, not so much on account of the gap left by the trees they throw, as
by the effect of these gaps on the bush remaining.39
An article in the Lyttelton Times in 1857 also protested against licensed timbergetting on reserved land, which caused great ... injury to public property.40
Due to the difficulty of enforcing timber licensing regulations, none were in
fact issued for Banks Peninsula from the mid-1850s until 1864, control being
attempted instead through the creation of timber reserves or bush reserves on
Crown land, adjacent to existing sawmills, where the exploitation (andultimately
the exhaustion) of the resource could in theory be monitored. Timber licensing
again became available from 1864, and again proved unsatisfactory, leading to
its abandonment as a management technique throughout Canterbury in 1870.41
Many years later, Potts recalled his dismay at the wasteful utilisation of the
magnificent timber on the Port Hills that he had witnessed. He often found
totara stripped of its bark for use as the roofing of a wretched hut, causing the
ruination of the tree itself. It was, he said, a wish
to point out the mischief occasioned by this destructive usage that led [me]
to a fruitless interview with a Provincial Secretary [John Ollivier] some thirty
years ago. It took but a few minutes to discover the unprofitableness of this
proceeding; with the utmost urbanity of demeanour, the worthy official showed
that he neither knew nor cared a rapp about the matter. The expensive system of
timber-cutting without efficient supervision, remained unchecked.42
This was written in 1887, indicating that Potts first actively (but unsuccessfully)
sought more effective forest conservation in the late 1850s.
As the bush fires of 1863 burnt their way across Banks Peninsulas forests, the
question of how to conserve the remaining forest gained greater urgency for
Potts. He was not, however, an MPC at the time, so did not participate in the
Council session which opened in September 1863. This was just a few days
38 Henry Phillips in Minutes Book, Society of Canterbury Colonists, 185052, Christchurch Public Library,
z Arch 16 (n. p.).
39 T. H. Potts, Diary, 25 July 1856.
41 For further details of timber legislation in Canterbury during this period, see Roche, History of New
Zealand Forestry, 7483.
42 T. H. Potts, Old Times, Canterbury Times, 2 December 1887, 28.
184
before the case of Marshall v. Hay was heard in the Supreme Court, when every
member knew that a great quantity of timber had been injured by the late
fires.43 Getting straight down to business, the Council discussed a Bush Fires Bill
(passed the following day) which provided that any person setting fire to any
grass, fern, scrub, etc, should be fined not less than forty shillings, aprovision
which Ollivier denounced as unnecessary.44
Potts resumed his duties as an MPC in 1866, continuing to serve until the
abolition of the provincial governments in 1876, but there is nothing to suggest
that he brought his concern about forests to the Councils attention in the late
sixties. From 1866 to 1870, however, he was also regularly in Wellington as
MHR for Mount Herbert (Banks Peninsula), which enabled him to raise the issue
at the national level in 1868. If forest conservation was necessary and could be
achieved through legislation, this was the more important audience to convince.
In 1860s Britain, there was a burgeoning concern with the supply of resources
needed to fuel and support the nations industrialisation and development.
This at least equalled a parallel anxiety about the effect of such rapidly
expanding extraction and production upon the environment in which people
lived.45 For Britains ongoing industrial revolution, the supply of coal appeared
crucial, and in 1865, for the first time, its long-term availability was brought
into question.46 In that year, the English economist William Stanley Jevons
published his influential enquiry concerning the progress of the nation and the
probable exhaustion of our coal-mines.47
Jevons arguments were detailed in the Christchurch newspaper, The Press,
inApril 1866. Potts (though not Travers) was in the House of Representatives in
Wellington by October 1866 when the Premier, Edward Stafford, recorded the
completion of geologist James Hectors report on the Coal Fields of the Colony
for the Imperial Government, who wished for information on Colonial Coal
Fields, in consequence of Mr Jevons observations on the exhaustion of the coal
fields of England. It is plausible that British anxieties about coal helped both
43 J. G. Fyfe, MHR for Port Victoria, reported in Lyttelton Times, 16 September, 1863.
44 The Press, 16 September 1863.
45 Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety, 11, briefly summarises the origins of environmental anxiety,
while James Winter, Secure from Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999) provides details of the British response.
46 See Andreas Malm, Fleeing the Flowing Commons: Robert Thom, Water Reservoir Schemes, and the
Shift to Steam Power in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain, Environmental History 19 (2014): 5577, on why
coal became crucial to Britains industrial development. Nuno Luis Madureira, in The Anxiety of Abundance:
William Stanley Jevons and Coal Scarcity in the Nineteenth Century, Environment and History 18 (2012):
395421, claims (page 421) that [c]ore themes in ecological thinking, such as the exhaustion of natural
resources, the rebound effect and the limits to economic growth, came out into the open through discussion
of the coal question.
47 W. S. Jevons, The Coal Question: An Enquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation and the Probable
Exhaustion of our Coal-Mines (London: Macmillan, 1865).
185
Hector and Potts towards more careful consideration of the future supply of New
Zealands principal fuel source (as well as its main construction material): that
is, of wood.48 It is much more evident, however, that the views of American and
Australian thinkers exerted a strong influence, since they applied specifically to
timber and to the situation faced by similar pioneering communities.
The influence of G. P. Marsh

More than five years after they had witnessed the bush fires of 1863 on Banks
Peninsula, Potts and Travers (both MHRs in 1868) referred to them while
debating the forests of the colony. Introducing his motion on the present
condition of forests, Potts said he had waited with patience to see if some steps
would be taken to preserve the forests which were the admiration of every
visitor to New Zealand; and he considered it was quite time that some action
should be taken in the matter.49
From the years between 1863 and 1868, two factors stand out which, I believe,
crystallised his thoughts and prompted him to call for action. He mentioned
both in his speech in 1868. The first was his study of material presented in Man
and Nature by George Perkins Marsh, though precisely when Potts read this
book I do not know. The second was his knowledge of forest legislation in the
Australian colony of Victoria. Taken together, these factors placed what was
happening to Canterburys forests within an international and an intellectual
context which Potts had previously seen but dimly.
In his 1868 speech, Potts also quoted two early scientific visitors to New
Zealand: Ernst Dieffenbach, an official of the New Zealand Company who was
in the North Island from 1839 to 1841, and geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter,
inthe north and in Nelson province between 1857 and 1859.50 Like Potts, these
men had seen forests ransacked and ravaged with fire and sword in which a
melancholy scene of waste and destruction presented itself, but neither got
much further than their expressions of alarm.
48 The Duration of our Supply of Coal, The Press, 18 April 1866, 2; Wellington Independent, 4 October
1866, 5. I know of no explicit juxtaposition of Britains coal demands and New Zealands timber demands prior
to an optimistic piece about Using Up the Worlds Products in the Bruce Herald, 10 September 1886, 5.
49 T. H. Potts, 7 October 1868, NZPD (1868): 188.
50 James Braund analysed the origins of Hochstetterss interest in forest conservation in The Geologist and
the Ravaged Kauri Forest: Ferdinand von Hochstetter as an Environmental Commentator (paper presented
at the New Zealand Historical Association Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin, 20 November 2013).
See also James Braund, ed., Ferdinand Hochstetter and the Contribution of German-Speaking Scientists to New
Zealand Natural History in the Nineteenth Century (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012).
186
Marsh went well beyond this. He had spent much of his first 60 years in Vermont,
during which time the states forest cover was reduced from three-quarters to
one quarter of its original area. Marsh was a lawyer and politician, but also a
sheep farmer and timber dealer, so had occasion both to observe and to feel the
evils resulting from an injudicious system of managing woodlands.51 There are
clearly parallels between Marshs experience in Vermont and Potts experience
in Canterbury a generation later.
When, aged 60, Marsh moved to Italy, he combined his duties as American
ambassador with wide-ranging scholastic pursuits. This enabled him to place
the environmental degradation of Vermont alongside examples of similar events
in classical times and in modern Europe. In turn, this resulted in the insights
that appeared in Man and Nature.
David Lowenthal has called this work one of the nineteenth centurys two
seminal books on the subject its title denoted, the other being Charles Darwins
On the Origin of Species (1859). Man and Nature was published in New York in
May 1864, and over 1,000 copies sold in a few months.52 It received a lengthy
review in an Australian newspaper, the Sydney Empire, in August 1864.53
Shorter notices in the Nelson Examiner in September and the New Zealand
Herald in November54 did little more than quote Marshs stated intention:
to indicate the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced
by human action in the physical condition of the globe we inhabit; to point out
the dangers of imprudence, and the necessity of caution in all operations which,
on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangement of the organic or
the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility or importance of the restoration
of disturbed harmonies, and the material improvement of waste and exhausted
regions[.]55
These ideas evidently took some time to digest. I have found no further mention
of Man and Nature in Australian newspapers until June 1866, when the Brisbane
Courier reprinted an article from the New York Post on the effect of stripping a
country of trees.56 A second New Zealand review appeared in the Otago Daily
Times in April 1866, but said nothing about conservation and mirrored none
of Marshs concern about the dangers of imprudence. Rather, the reviewer
found occasion to display a kind of colonial mindset that was fairly standard in
the1860s:
51 David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2000), 273.
52 Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, 305, 302.
53 The Empire, 25 August 1864.
54 Nelson Examiner, 6 September 1864; New Zealand Herald, 7 November 1864.
55 Marsh, Man and Nature, iii.
56 Brisbane Courier, 15 June 1866. This article then also surfaced in three other Australian papers.
187
[t]he country is to make [that is, to be made]the growth of centuries has to be

cleared and supplanted by vegetation of another kind. In place of the primeval
forest, fields of corn are to be raised. In lieu of ferns and mosses, pastures are to be
prepared Such is the mission of colonists The earth has to be subdued, and
rendered subservient to human will The tangled bush must then give place
to the hedge-row and the road, and to plants and animals producing material for
food or manufacture.57
Both Marsh and Potts would have subscribed to this vision up to a point, and,
indeed, they both pursued it. It was the consequences of its pursuit, when
untempered, that troubled them.
Man and Nature, by collating evidence from throughout the world of the
environmental effects of deforestation, painted a broad canvas within which
local observers, such as Potts in Canterbury, could place their own experiences
and better understand them. By providing such strong evidence that increases
in instances of flooding and drought were often the consequence of forest
clearance, Marsh supplied lobbyists with a further reason, above and beyond
the prospect of timber shortages, for a more measured and restrained approach
to the exploitation of remaining forests.
In his 1868 speech, Potts made specific reference to Marshs evidence from
the French Alps, which demonstrated the varied influence of the forests, as
shelter, on temperature, on humidity, on floods, on the flow of springs; and his
arrangement of facts proves the removal of forests to be the primary cause of
excessive inundations. Turning then to his local knowledge, Potts surmised a
similar cause for changes to water flow in the Hutt Valley near Wellington, and
he anticipated a similar scenario with forest destruction in Westland.
Later in the debate, Travers, another early reader of Man and Nature, described
floods that followed disforestation in the Rhne Valley in France, then opined
that the floods of the Waimakariri and other rivers had been enormously
increased by the indiscriminate burning of the timber at the head of those
streams.58 He also made detailed reference to Marshs writings in his muchquoted first lecture on the changes effected on the natural features of a country
by the sudden introduction of civilised races, delivered in Wellington a year
later in August 1869.59
57 Otago Daily Times, 6 April 1866.
58 W. T. L. Travers, 7 October 1868, NZPD 14 (1868): 191. In terms of a more general environmental anxiety,
Canterbury residents had plenty to worry about in 1868. A strong earthquake wave was experienced
at Lyttelton in August. The Waimakariri River, which had burst its banks and caused severe flooding in
Christchurch in December 1865, again caused disastrous floods in March 1868. Attempted solutions centred
on earth moving, though tree-planting along the embankments was considered helpful. Lyttelton Times,
17August, 4 March, and 10 January 1868.
59 Wellington Independent, 10 August 1869. Potts was in Wellington at the time, so was probably in the
audience.
188
Forest conservation in Victoria and Otago

Charles ONeill, MHR for the Otago gold-fields, who also supported Potts
motion in 1868, may or may not have read Marsh by then, but he had certainly
read the report of the board appointed in August 1867 in Victoria (Australia), to
report on the best means of securing the permanency of the State forests of that
Colony. The examples ONeill quoted from the Victorian report had all been
described beforehand in Man and Nature: the effects of forest destruction in the
French Alps, but also in Spain, Palestine, and North Africa, and the aridity
subdued through tree-planting in the Lands [near Bordeaux] and in Algeria.60
In the House of Representatives at least, Potts was never verbose. In contrast to
ONeills lengthy quotations from the Victorian report, Potts merely stated that:
The mischievous results from the cutting down of forests in a wholesale manner
[have] called for the attention of the Legislature of Victoria.61 It is, however,
clear from his letters to the Lyttelton Times in January and February 1869 that
Potts studied this document with care and was much influenced by it.62
Victorias chief mining surveyor and its Secretary for Mines were both on the
board of five, which completed its report in February 1868. It was designed, in
part, to address the necessity for permanent provision for a continuous supply
of timber for mining purposes. It is quite understandable that ONeill, who
represented the largely treeless Otago gold-fields district in New Zealands House
of Representatives, had a copy of the report forwarded to him by Victorias
Minister of Mines.63 The roads to conservation taken by ONeill (at first mostly
concerned about the shortage of timber props for mining operations) and by
Potts (who saw the 1865 West Coast gold rush as an unwelcome distraction from
the serious business of colonisation) were quite different, but their destination
was the same.
The Melbourne Argus, in welcoming the Victorian report, commented that
[e]xtensive as our forests still are, they cannot last long unless effectual
regulations for preserving them in certain districts be established. Discernment
and forethought in the employment of the axe cannot of course be looked for
among the early colonists of a new country, but we have now reached a stage in
our colonial career when it becomes absolutely necessary to set aside particular
tracts of woodland for our future timber supply.64
60 Charles ONeill, 7 October 1868, NZPD 14 (1868): 19192, George P. Marsh, Man and Nature, or, Physical
Geography as Modified by Human Action (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), 279, 370, 512.
62 Lyttelton Times, 26 January 1869, 23 February 1869.
63 Argus, 16 August 1867; Charles ONeill, 7 October 1868, NZPD 14 (1868): 191.
64 Argus, 22 February 1868.
189
This thinking was essentially the same as that which prompted Potts motion in
New Zealand eight months later. It provided both the precedent he needed and
a blueprint for what might be done. In addition to the creation of plantations,
the report recommended abolition of the existing system of timber licensing
within state forest reserves. Commissioners, it said, should be appointed to
enforce rigorous new regulations to prevent within such reserves the felling
of trees under a certain size, compel the removal of the hewn timber within
a reasonable time, [and] prevent the destruction of trees for sake of the
barkonly.65
When speaking in 1868, Potts made no reference to similar Otago proposals. Itwas
left to two Otago MHRs, Donald Reid and Julius Vogel, to bring their province
into the picture. Reid, in particular, recalled the narrow defeat of resolutions
brought before the Otago Provincial Council earlier that year by William Mosley,
which would have promoted the management and conservation of public
bush reserves in Otago.66 Potts, in talking with his fellow MHRs in Wellington,
would have learnt all about Mosleys and other initiatives. In particular, there
are similarities between the forestry concerns of Potts in Canterbury and those
of William Murison, MHR for Waikouaiti (in Otago) from 1866 to 1868.
In November 1867, Otagos government became aware of recent initiatives
taken by the Board of Agriculture in Victoria. In response, they approached the
officials of their provinces agricultural societies (including Murison) for ideas
on boards, model farms, and what new productions might be encouraged.
67
Murison, leaping at this opportunity to propose anything else of a similar
nature, referred to the timber shortage in Otago and the need for tree-planting.
He unfavourably compared his provinces response to that of Canterbury, where
neighbours vie with each other in promoting the art of sylviculture. He also
noted recent accounts of the improvidence of many European nations, in not
replacing the forests which have been felled in time past. For Otago, he suggested
not only The preservation of the public bush reserves but also that Land
laid down in forest by private individuals might be exempted from taxation
Reserves of land might be made for planting out ultimately in forest [and]
land might be given on condition that it should be planted out withtrees.68
One would think that calls for forest legislation in Otago, which paralleled and
sometimes preceded those in Canterbury, might have influenced Potts thinking
at least as much as the Victorian proposals. Canterbury and Otago, after all, were
neighbouring provinces, both with populations affected by the dearth of timber
65 Argus, 22 February 1868.
66 Roche, History of New Zealand Forestry, 6768.
67 Otago Daily Times, 31 March 1868.
68 Otago Daily Times, 1 April 1868. Murison again pushed for the planting and conservation of forests
atan Otago Acclimatisation Society meeting in 1870: Otago Daily Times, 11 March 1870.
190
to the east of the Southern Alps. In general, however, Victorian conservation

efforts appear to have influenced Canterburys and Otagos actions far more than
the New Zealand provinces influenced each other.
There was one mention of the Canterbury Bush Fires Bill of 1863 in the Southland
Times, but I have found none in Dunedin newspapers. In the following year,
faced with their own fires, members of Otagos Provincial Council passed a Bush
Fires Bill in May. This was noted in the Christchurch Press, but there is no
indication that Otago was inspired by the Canterbury precedent. When Otagos
provincial secretary introduced their bill, he unapologetically called it a copy
of an Act existing in Victoria, minus certain clauses.69
Response to Potts motion

Once the House of Representatives in Wellington had agreed to Potts motion
of 1868, Hector was instructed to gather information on the present condition
of the forests. As the head of New Zealands Geological Survey and Director of
the Colonial Museum, he was considered the best state employee for the job.
Hector duly sent a questionnaire to provincial superintendents and their officials:
[h]ow much forest was there in your area before settlement, he asked, and how
much is left? How much remains as Crown land? Has most been destroyed on
Crown land or on freehold, and how has it been destroyed? Is it being felled by
the holders of bush licences, or is the destruction more by accidental fires and
grazing cattle? Has the destruction of forests led to floods or droughts? Do you
think bush reserves are a good thing, or is forest better conserved when it is
freehold? If the system of bush licences leads to waste, how can forests be better
managed so they provide timber but are not destroyed?70 The responses, which
were strikingly diverse, provide a panoramic view of opinions on native forests
at the time.71
Take the question of bush reserves and bush licences. Cyrus Davie, the Chief
Surveyor of Canterbury, thought bush licenses are not advisable ... They give
men the right to go anywhere ... and to cut and destroy any quantity of timber.
Having no permanent interest in the soil, they look only to the present, and often
destroy as much valuable timber as they bring into the market.72 Southlands
Commissioner of Crown Lands, Walter Pearson, however, thought the licensed
69 Southland Times, 27 October 1863; Otago Witness, 7 May 1864; The Press, 12 April 1864; Otago Daily
Times, 12 April 1864.
70 Questions paraphrased from Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR),
D22,1869, 3.
71 AJHR, D22, 1869, 416.
72 Correspondence Relative to the Present Condition of the Forests of New Zealand, AJHR, D22, 1869: 9.
191
cutting of timber in government reserves could continue, but would need to be

closely overseen by rangers if it was to promote conservation. Similarly Otagos
Commissioner, John Turnbull Thomson, wanted government to appoint and
pay Forest Wardens for the purpose of marking out the area to each licensee,
no other area to be granted till the allotment is completely cleared of stems and
branches. It was the leaving of the branches, he said, that creates the great
havoc during fires.73
Thomas Brunner, the Chief Surveyor of Nelson province, saw reserves in
a different light. While reserves had originated from a desire (unfulfilled) to
control the utilisation of their timber, he saw newer environmental arguments
for them, prefiguring the climatic forest conservancy proposed for New Zealand
in 1877 by Inches Campbell Walker, and the climate reserves introduced under
Vogels State Forests Act of 1885.74 Brunner thought the tops of many of the
mountain ranges should be reserved on either side for a certain distance from
their summit[s], and also that reserves should be made at the source of all rivers
and streams. Brunner envisioned what he called actual reserves, in which no
timber would be cut.
Davie had no such a vision. We have now brought the fire into these forests,
he wrote, and I believe it will be utterly impossible to preserve the remaining
forests for any length of time. He was certain that forests should be allowed to
pass into freehold, as the only chance of their ultimate preservation. Davie lived
in an area already largely denuded of native forest and, like many Canterbury
men, could see little future for what was left. Yet it was perhaps precisely
because the timber shortage was so evident in their province, and the area of
remaining forest so clearly finite, that a handful of Cantabrians (notably Potts
and, by the 1890s, Leonard Cockayne and Henry Ell) were so alert to the need
for its protection.75
Potts must have been encouraged when both the parliamentary debate of 1868
and the resulting questionnaire elicited several expressions of concern in line
with his own. There were, however, no further parliamentary outcomes during
his last year in the House of Representatives. At one point, while reminding the
House that he had seen the whole [of Banks] Peninsula covered with one mass
73 Paul Star, T. H. Potts and the Origins of Conservation in New Zealand (18501890) (M.A. diss., University
of Otago, 1991), 77.
74 Roche, History of New Zealand Forestry, 91, 94.
75 Catherine Knight, Creating a Pastoral World through Fire: Manawatu, 18701910, Journal of New
Zealand Studies, n. s., 16 (2013): 10022, suggests that the regions most supportive of conservation had fewer
forests, plus a greater number of wealthier immigrants from more highly educated backgrounds (page 116)
able to appreciate and promote conservation. Canterbury, and Potts, fit the bill.
192
of smoke, he bemoaned the lack of progress since the publication of Hectors

report. He feared there were now only two places in that locality [i. e. Banks
Peninsula] where there was timber left that was worth preserving.76
After 1870, Potts could no longer directly push for parliamentary action,
though ONeill, now MHR for Thames (another gold-fields seat), remained in the
House and maintained the pressure for conservation until upstaged by Vogel.77
National legislation in support of forest conservation finally resulted in 1874,
six years after Potts motion.78
In addition to the remarks already quoted, Davie also opined that legislation
should lead rather to the encouragement of the new plantations than to the very
doubtful attempt to preserve the old forests. In the history of New Zealand
conservation, Potts motion is highlighted and approved; at the same time,
the scepticism expressed by men like Davie is either ignored or condemned.
ButPotts himself increasingly doubted the effectiveness of any legislative cures.
By the 1870s, his response to timber shortage no longer centred on political
actions to save native forests. He still valued the forest, but he focused more
on the potential for exotic tree-plantingas already stressed by Davie, among
others.
By the end of the 1860s, three ways to promote tree-planting had been expressed.
Firstly, legislation might encourage private individuals to plant trees. Secondly,
government could organise the distribution of seeds and seedlings suitable for
planting, primarily, by private individuals. Thirdly, government could take the
bull by the horns and plant trees in its own public plantations.
Looking mostly at the Canterbury picture in which Potts most persistently
figured, I further differentiate two criss-crossing trails: one series of actions
directly promoted legislation to encourage tree-planting, but there was also a
wider-ranging push to support the colonial economy through development of
local manufactures. To Potts way of thinking, conserved native forest and
planted exotics would both foster future industry.
76 T. H. Potts, NZPD, 15 July 1870, 472.

77 Stephen Utick, Captain Charles, Engineer of Charity: The Remarkable Life of Charles Gordon ONeill
(Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2008), contains little about ONeills support of forest conservation.
78 For details of ONeills unsuccessful efforts in 1872 and 1873, the withdrawal of Donald McLeans
Conservation of Forests bill in 1873, and the successful passage of a modified New Zealand Forests Act
(introduced by Vogel) in 1874, see Roche, Forest Policy in New Zealand, 7380, and Roche, History of New
Zealand Forestry, 8388.
193
Local industry
In order to develop, nineteenth-century New Zealand required both local
industry and overseas income. By increasing the availability of resources and
locally manufactured goods within the colony, the need to import essential items
(such as building timber and furniture) was reduced. In addition, if a surplus of
resources or goods could be exported overseas, this would provide income for
colonials to import those essentials and luxuries, such as railway engines and
cotton goods, which there was little or no prospect of producing locally.
As noted, Canterbury never had enough native forest to countenance the largescale export of native timber. In the 1850s, the provinces ability to purchase
depended on the merino wool clip. Potts, like the majority of MPCs, was a
runholder and sheep-farmer. It was economically unhealthy, however, for a
colony to have all its eggs in one basket. The situation was relieved by the
discovery of gold in 1864 on the South Islands West Coast (then still part of
Canterbury), but workable gold was a finite resource, and thoughtful settlers
sought longer term sources of income.
Various ways forward were imaginable. Indigenous primary products with
export potential, if plentiful, could be exported in a raw or semi-processed state.
Or both indigenous and exotic species might become raw materials for colonial
industries, producing processed goods. Such goods would certainly reduce the
need for, and expense of, imports from Britain; in time they might also become
export items. Or again, experimentation with introduced stock and plants could
produce further raw materials for the British market, in addition to the existing
export of wool.
By the early years of the twentieth century it had become clear that sheep
(by then the source of both wool and meat exports) would continue to be the
mainstay of Canterburys economy, as for New Zealand as a whole. For settlers
in the 1860s, however, there could be no certainty about how exports would
develop, nor what new mineral resources might be found, nor when the
population would grow large enough to support local industries by providing
labour and increasing local demand. The only certainty was the wisdom of
exploring all options.
Potts supported all these approaches. His interest in treeswhich, in one
form or other, could boost both overseas income and local industryoperated
within his wider concern for the colonys development and its future health.
To nineteenth-century New Zealanders in general, the native species with
most export potential was harakeke (Phormium tenax). The very name used by
European settlers for this plantflaxemphasised the value of its fibre as a
raw material, for in Britain, this word traditionally referred to the northern
194
plant (Linum usitatissimum) from which linen was manufactured. As noted in

1823, however, the native [New Zealand] flax-plant is by no means like the
flax or hemp plants of England.79 Already by the 1830s, New Zealand flax was
being processed in London and promoted as the best resource for making sails
and ropes for the British navy: it would see Neptune new riggd.80 By 1868,
one of the many flax-dressing businesses was located at Halswell on the edge of
Christchurch, employing forty men and boys constantly.81
Potts in 1869 considered that if the spirited endeavour to establish a new
export in the article of dressed flax, meets with success, we may expect very
considerable attention will be paid to developing this new industry. Since
this meant most of the wild flax that is easily accessible will soon be used
up, he looked forward to plantations of flax. Potts suggested that Canterburys
provincial gardener, John Armstrong, undertake experiments in the culture of
flax showing how to obtain the best quality of fibre, the proper time and age
for cutting, probable yield, &c.82and this proposal was acted on.83 In 1870,
when the government set up a Flax Commission under the ubiquitous Hector,
Potts became its Canterbury representative.
When Potts thought about the flax or any other industry, his mind often
also turned to wood. Thus, immediately after describing flaxs potential to
the Canterbury Provincial Council in 1869, Potts also thought that, through
Armstrong, sample logs of the furniture woods of the province might be
collected and forwarded to the English agent, with particulars of the average
obtainable size of such timber, as would be likely to be appreciated by
manufacturers of ornamental furniture. He considered, further, that the forests
would furnish bark for dyeing and tanning purposes, the lichens covering the
trees might in all probability possess dyeing qualities[;] resinous gums exuded
from the Dammara and Panax, and vegetable oil had been expressed from
titoki [Alectryon excelsus].84
All these local manufactures would have utilised native resources, but by the
1850s Britains imperial record included numerous examples of species with
resource potential which had been shifted not only from Britain to the colonies,
but also between colonies. Thoughts, therefore, did not focus on what grew
naturally in New Zealand so much as on what else might grow there. Sericulture
79 W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches in the South Sea Islands, vol. 1 (London: Fisher, Son & Jackson, 1829),
27.
80 M. J. J. Donlan, Phormium Tenax, or Neptune New Riggd: Statement of Facts Relative to Experiments
Made upon Phormium tenax or New Zealand Flax (London: W. Glindon, 1833).
81 J. S. Williams in Canterbury Provincial Council, 2 December 1868, as reported in Lyttelton Times,
3December 1868.
82 T. H. Potts, Flax Culture, letter to the editor, Lyttelton Times, 8 February 1869.
195
(the raising of silkworms for the production of raw silk) was perhaps the first
exotic industry to which Potts gave thought. In 1853, the year before he left
England for New Zealand, he sent ahead a Wardian case of white mulberry
seedlings, their leaves being the food that silkworms eat. These were planted
on Potts behalf in Lyttelton.85 Two years later, Potts transplanted them to his
garden at Valehead, near Rockwood.86 A decade later still, the Canterbury
Acclimatisation Society received silk worms from Sydney and distributed them
among interested members such as himself.87
Sugar beet and cloth production, like sericulture, became perennial candidates
for local industries for both the New Zealand and Australian colonies. As an
MPC in December 1868, Potts successfully moved that the Government be
requested to offer premiums for tweed cloths, blankets, and beetroot sugar
manufactured within the province.88 This time Potts noted not only a successful
Victorian cloth industry, but also the Otago Provincial Councils recent offer
of premiums for local cloth and sugar beet production.89 He had himself just
received a package of tweeds (presumably locally produced) from Nelson.90
Private tree-planting
A national initiative followed in 1870 when a parliamentary joint committee,
which included Potts, ONeill, and Travers among its members, spent a few days
in July gathering ideas on possible colonial industries. In the resulting report,
the first six recommendations all related to the exploitation of New Zealands
mineral resources, drawing on information from their star witness: Hector.
There was also, however, a recommendation that persons planting timber trees
upon unsold Crown lands should be secured in the freehold of the country
so planted out, either by pre-emptive right of purchase or by free gift.91
Thiswould have given government a role in encouraging tree-planting, but no
direct involvement. In this respect, it matched other recommendations in the
report with regard to sericulture and sugar beet, and for free passage to New
Zealand for Welshmen and Yorkshiremen versed in cloth manufacture.
85 The Press, 18 June 1870.

86 T. H. Potts, Diary, 17 September 1855.
87 Star, 18 June 1870.
88 Lyttelton Times, 3 December 1868.
89 The Press, 3 December 1868. Six months later Canterburys government had also advertised premiums,
but no other action followed. The Press, 21 May 1869.
90 Shipping, Lyttelton Times, 11 November 1868.
91 Report of the Joint Committee on Colonial Industries, AJHR, F-1 (1870).
196
Years earlier, in 1856, John Hall had promoted private plantation at the
provincial level.92 This precipitated the Planting of Forest Trees Ordinance of
1858, to encourage and promote the planting of Forest Trees on Rural Sections
in the Province of Canterbury. The ordinance sought to ensure that, if a tenant
planted more than 50 timber trees on a 10-acre (4.05 hectare) or larger section,
he could cut them down or transplant them prior to the expiry of his lease, or
else arrange for their mandatory purchase at an agreed price by his landlord.93
This was a removal of obstacles more than the provision of incentives. Given
proper registration, Hall thought tenants would no longer feel discouraged
from proceeding with plantations. Whether this had any tangible result
is unknown, but clearly it was not enough. Five years later, in 1863, an
anonymous correspondent of the Lyttelton Times still found that want of timber
is the greatest of all our necessities, and one not likely to be mitigated for a
considerable time.94 Nevertheless, no further legislation to encourage planting,
other than the development of Hagley Park in central Christchurch, was passed
by the Council in the 1860s.
One attempt was made, however, during a Council meeting in October 1869
at which Potts was present. On this occasion, John Evans Yankee Brown,
MPC, proposed tree-planting encouragement policies along American lines.
Hethought there should be a 10 per cent discount on the rates for every acre of
land planted and protected. His motion was withdrawn at the request of Hall,
who I suspect already had a new proposal in mind and did not want Brown
muddying the waters.95
Hall proved to be a more consistent and persuasive politician than Brown or Potts
ever was. In 1871, he introduced a Canterbury Forest Trees Bill in the House of
Representatives in Wellington. It transmogrified into the Forest Trees Planting
Encouragement Act of the same year, which granted two acres of free land to
any settler who had planted one acre of their land in forest trees. Thus, Halls
dogged support of private plantationpromoted at the provincial and national
level, and on his own sheep stationeventually ensured that this approach
received a significant trial through the 1870s and 1880s.96 Furthermore, South
Australias Tree Planting Encouragement Act of 1873 was directly modelled on
the New Zealand precedent, illustrating that not all innovative policies crossed
the Tasman Sea in an easterly direction.97
92 Lyttelton Times, 26 April 1856.

93 The Ordinances of the Canterbury Provincial Council Session 10, October to December 1858.
94 Lyttelton Times, 3 June 1863.
95 The Press, 21 October 1869.
96 For further detail, see Star, Tree Planting in Canterbury.
97 Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety, 16667.
197
In the event, Halls measure proved inadequate to stimulate the volume of timber
production required in New Zealands rapidly expanding economy. That left
the way clear for more direct government involvement in forestry, including
state planting, as legislated for by Vogel in 1874. I note here only that, while
Vogels support of forestry development from 1873 onwards is well known, little
attention has been given by historians to the earlier efforts made by Hall (a later
Premier) and to the approach he pioneered.98
Organising supply
Potts did not personally take advantage of the terms of the tree-planting
encouragement acts: He was planting trees anyway. He had fruit trees growing
in Valehead before his move to Governors Bay in 1858; by 1863 his cherry crabs
were prize-winners at the Christchurch Horticultural Show and a string of such
prizes followed. 99 These were fruit-growing and horticultural endeavours, but
he was equally involved in all aspects of silviculture, including tree-planting.
Potts disputed popular beliefs that native trees were hard to transplant or
establish outside forest conditions, but he agreed that in general they were
too slow-growing to be suitable for timber plantations. This is not to say that
he had no interest in growing them: indeed, in September 1870 he spoke on
the cultivation of some species of native trees and shrubs to the Wellington
Philosophical Society, summarising what he and his gardener had learned from
the experience of several years.100 But it was almost a given at the time that treeplanting initiatives would relate to the planting of exotics, not natives.
There was a sequential enthusiasm for different exotic species during the 1850s
and 1860s, which Potts himself recorded:
Of necessity willows and poplars, a case of Hobsons choice, were the first loves
of the tree-growers They soon had their day, as a few seedling gum trees
98 The biographies of both men deal only briefly with their tree-planting and forestry interests. See Jean
Garner, By His Own Merits: Sir John HallPioneer, Pastoralist and Premier (Hororata: Dryden Press, 1995),
6768 and 12829, and Raewyn Dalziel, Julius Vogel: Business Politician (Auckland: Auckland University
Press, 1986).
99 Lyttelton Times, 4 March 1863.
100 T. H. Potts and William Gray, On the Cultivation of Some Species of Native Trees and Shrubs,
Transactions of the New Zealand Institute 3 (1870): 181202. They noted (page 181) a prejudice against
planting native shrubs, from the supposed difficulty attending their successful treatment. Most early settlers
accepted, as Darwinian scientists of the day theorised, that the displacement of native trees by (supposedly)
superior northern species was inevitable. Dr Arthur Purchas gave a classic expression of this view before
the Auckland Institute in 1874: [s]ome of the New Zealand trees might be preserved, but many of them could
not resist the advances of civilization, and, like the native birds, would in time almost entirely vanish. It was
a natural result, and they must not bemoan it, but rather make preparations for filling their place with trees
that would live and bear cultivation. Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 7 (1874): 51920.
198
showed such extraordinary vigour and rapidity of growth that they induced a
fashion to sow seeds of Australian trees The desire of cultivating Australian
species in turn gave way before the furore for growing Californian conifers[.]101
Potts planted Australian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) at Governors Bay in the
late 1850s, but by July 1865 his attention had turned to Pinus ponderosa, from
western North America.102
In 1866, Potts launched into a diverse tree-planting programme, mostly
involving pines (he had 18 different species of these by 1870), but also cedars
and cypresses. He regularly assessed their growth, tabulating and publishing
results until 1885, by which time he had conclusively shown that, under local
conditions, Monterey pine (now known as Pinus radiata) grew the fastest.103
This was a conscious and conscientious attempt to ascertain which trees held
greatest potential for future timber supply in Canterbury.
Potts was also associated with tree-planting ventures in Christchurchs domain
(which became its botanic garden) and neighbouring Hagley Park, which were
government-funded activities on public land. The origins of the Hagley Park
plantings can be traced back to 1858 when Richard Harman MPC, at a Council
meeting attended by Potts, had 200 set aside to plant out a portion of the
Park. Harman opined that private planting was insufficient, considering that
one of the special and most objectionable features of the country was want of
timber.104 The development of the Park that followed, however, was pursued
more for its amenity value.
Operations in the Park at this time should not be underestimated. By 1864, the
nursery of Enoch Barker, the provincial government gardener, was four acres
(1.6 hectares) in extent:
From this nursery the whole of the domain, which comprises about fifty-nine
acres [24 ha], is supplied with the young stock planted in the latter. In one bed
are five thousand varieties of native shrubs and trees. In another are layers of
birch and lime Ten thousand oak plants, one thousand Spanish chestnuts,
and a very large number of elms, box, and laurels are planted here, and in due
time will be removed to their destined place in the public plantation. Twentyfive thousand young plants have already been placed there, forty thousand
remaining in the nursery.105
101 T. H. Potts, Old Times, Canterbury Times, 2 December 1887, 28; 9 December 1887, 28.
102 Potts, Diary, 15 May 1865 and 6 July 1865.
103 See T. H. Potts, Through a Young Plantation, New Zealand Country Journal 2 (1878): 39097 and 3(1879):
3438; T. H. Potts, Measurements of Some Coniferous Trees Planted in 1866 in Ohinitahi, Canterbury,
NewZealand Country Journal 9 (1885): 477.
104 Lyttelton Times, 6 November 1858.
105 Lyttelton Times , 15 October 1864. See also Citizen on Government Plantations in Lyttelton Times,
19April 1864, 18 April 1860, and 16 November 1861.
199
In 1864, the annual vote was 1,196 for public plantation.106 The Provincial
Council provided similar annual sums for public plantations on either side of
1869, when Potts commented on how such operations could be refocused and
extended. Planting therefore continued without reflection on how it might have
addressed Canterburys timber shortage. Opposing the public plantation vote
in 1871, a member of the new city council argued that there were a number of
streets wanting forming and repairs, and he thought it was far better to have
useful works carried out in preference to ornamentation.107
Public planting in Christchurch, at least of this kind, was well ahead of anything
in Wellington, but the situation in New Zealands capital city was reformed by
the Botanic Garden of Wellington Act of September 1869. Canterbury MHRs
Potts and Travers were among those who spoke up for the Act, which paved the
way for Hector (as its Director) to make the garden serve New Zealands forestry
needs. Hector had recently received a collection of the seeds of 200 species from
the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, and now he had somewhere to
propagate them. Thereafter, Wellingtons botanic garden became the centre of
a network of tree-planting endeavours that operated throughout the colony.108
This network built upon the more ad hoc exchange of seeds and seedlings,
largely between private individuals, which already existed. In 1868, for
instance, Edward Richardson of Albury Park in Canterbury wrote to Professor
Martin Kellogg of San Francisco for some Pinus radiata seed, which I suspect
was the source of some of the radiata seedlings that Potts planted. Certainly
Potts was the middleman in 1871 when he arranged for the transfer of seedlings
from Richardson in Albury to Hector in Wellington; and in due course Kellogg
became the principal supplier of Californian conifer seed to the New Zealand
government.109
In 1870, while answering the Committee on Colonial Industries questions about
gold, coal, and sericulture, Hector also addressed the subject of timber supply.
ONeill asked him if steps should be taken for the conservation of the existing
forests and he replied (as ONeill or Potts themselves would have) that the
rapid destruction of the native forests I consider to be most wasteful, and as
having the effect of rapidly reducing the natural resources of the country.110
106 The Press, 14 September 1864. A similar amount went to the Acclimatisation Society to introduce exotic
birds and fish.
107 The Press, 4 April 1871.
108 Winsome Shepherd and Walter Cook, The Botanic Garden, Wellington: A New Zealand History, 18401987
(Wellington: Millwood Press, 1988), 25.
109 Shepherd and Cook, The Botanic Garden, Wellington, 12324.
110 Report of the Joint Committee on Colonial Industries,AJHR(1870) Session I, F-1, 10.
200
His principal line, however, was that the subject of the immediate planting of
large portions of the Colony, from which the natural forest has been denuded,
with the most profitable class of introduced trees is one of the most important
in this Colony. His emphasis lay not with land laws encouragement, nor with
some new kind of public plantation such as Potts had proposed a few months
earlier. Rather, Hector wanted the government to provide machinery for the
distribution at a moderate price of the best varieties of trees. These would be
raised from seed on a large scale, and distributed when they have reached the
proper time for transplanting. The committees recommendations did not reflect
this piece of advice from Hector, but his comments referred to a procedure upon
which, as we have seen, he had already spent government funds.111
Public plantations
Potts wanted government action to go further. Just as he envisaged flax
plantations supplementing naturally growing flax, so Potts saw a need for timber
trees grown in plantations to supplement the timber supply from native forests.
With trees, as with flax, he felt that government should play its part through
research and education, and provision of incentives and publicity. In the case
of trees, however, Potts went significantly beyond most his contemporaries in
the 1860s, in arguing that government should not only encourage individual
landowners to plant them, but also should itself plant trees.
Potts first wrote to the Lyttelton Times about plantations in January 1869, a month
before his letter on flax culture. His January letter, headed local manufactures,
similarly combined discussion of two important matters, affecting the good of
the province. Firstly, he sought to hurry along the provincial governments
initiation of local manufactures.112 Secondly, Potts mooted his idea of public
plantations, planted with timber trees to replace those destroyed in bush fires.
Having opposed the issuing of timber cutting licences as wasteful, he welcomed
the decision to issue no more. But he wanted government to
go a step further and devote a certain proportion of the amount realised from the
sale of timber land for the purpose of public plantations. We yearly devote a sum
of money for public plantations for the ornamentation of the chief town of the
province. Let us take into consideration use, as well as ornament, and extend our
operations. There are many localities where extensive plantations would provide
a great climatic benefit, and it does not require any very long journey across
the plains of Canterbury to appreciate the value of this provision for the future
supply of valuable timber.
111 Shepherd and Cook, The Botanic Garden, Wellington, 9598.
112 Lyttelton Times, 26 January 1869.
201
As when putting his ideas on forest conservation to the House of Representatives

a few months earlier, he recommended the Victorian governments forestry
report for further information on the subject.
Potts acknowledged that public plantations already existed, in the form of the
ornamental trees planted in Hagley Park and elsewhere. But what he was now
suggesting was quite different, as he explained in a further letter to the Lyttelton
Times.113 He envisaged not only special reserves for plantations of useful forest
timber, but also planting on portions of the reserves that are at present set
aside for educational and other public purposes.
He pointed out that public plantations would help Canterburys balance of
payments, given that the wood of various kinds we have imported must during
several years have amounted to a very large annual outgoing. He then adopted a
more moral tone: through planting trees, he said, we acted as faithful stewards,
looking to the future well-being of the community. He envisaged gains not only
in terms of timber supply but also in terms of climate.114 As Peter Holland points
out, flooding was a major concern of Canterbury residents in the 1860s. 115
Potts further suggested that osier willows planted in marshy swamp would
supply material for basket-ware, hoops, etc, its bark furnishing a good
proportion of tannin, as well as enabling our chemists to extract from it the
crystallisable principle salicin, which like the sulphate of quinine, arrests the
progress of fever. He had earlier stressed the potential value of native trees for
furniture-making. Now he was saying that exotic trees in public plantations
might stimulate other industries.
In the context of New Zealand in 1869, Potts call for this new kind of public
plantation was quite radical. Consider the response it elicited from a longstanding friend, Mark Stoddart. He similarly wanted
plantations to supply [i. e. make up for] the waste and destruction that has been
going on in the natural forests of our province, and, likewise, with a view to
ameliorate the rather hard and shelterless features of our climate. I fully concur
with him [Potts] in the necessity that something should be done in that direction.

114 Potts enlarged upon the idea of climatic benefits by quoting directly from the Victorian report: forest
trees changed the climate by modifying extremes of temperature, and increasing the humidity of air, by
causing a more continuous rainfall in districts that are now subject to long and excessive droughts The
vegetable mould formed by the decomposition of leaves and wood not only enriches the surface soil, but
causes it to become much more absorbent, and, from its spongy nature, to retain a large portion of the rainfall
that would otherwise drain away by percolation at great depths, or flow off rapidly by surface channels. It is
chiefly due to this last that in dense forests heavy rains do not cause such violent floods as in open country.
Lyttelton Times, 23 February 1869.
115 Peter Holland, Home in the Howling Wilderness: Settlers and the Environment in Southern New Zealand
(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013), 7175.
202
But, before going into the subject of public plantationswhich is surrounded

with many practical drawbacks and difficulties, besides the important one of
expenseI would, with all diffidence, make a few suggestions as to planting,
and urge them upon freehold proprietors, with whom the planting movement
should begin.116
The idea of public plantations was ideologically challenging: it went against early
Victorian preferences, still strongly held in 1869, for a laissez-faire approach,
private enterprise wherever possible, and minimal government. Aleader in the
Otago Daily Times three months later agreed that wise and liberal legislation
might greatly promote the planting of timber trees; however, it was no part
of the proper business of the Government to undertake such work itself.117
Public plantations were no more than a pipe dream at the time, whereas private
plantations were already being created by Potts and dozens of other landowners.
Discussion
The situation changed after 1870, as population increased and colonial
development accelerated. The limitations of policies encouraging private
tree-planting (and towards other forms of private enterprise) became evident.
Private tree-planting and its promotion characterised early efforts to involve
government in the forest question; by the end of the century, however, public
plantation (along with native forest conservation) had become a key feature of
the governments forest policy.118
Looking at New Zealand in the 1860s and into the 1870s, I also find good cause to
stress local concerns and the tree-planting response. And certainly, among those
who claimed a reward under the Tree Planting Encouragement Acts were many
men who (unlike Potts) never showed a parallel interest in native forests or their
conservation. But there is perhaps a need to better differentiate between the
origins of forestry concerns on the one hand, and the structuring of legislative
responses on the other. The former began at the local level and resulted mostly
in tree-planting in the first instance. The latter developed later, and drew not
only on local realities but also on European precedents, sometimes through an
Indian filter. In the case of New Zealand, there was often also an Australian
filter, since Victoria in particular had already begun the adaptation of European
116 Lyttelton Times, 2 March 1869.

117 Review of Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. 1, in Otago Daily Times, 13 July 1869.
118 Paul Star, Henry Matthews Contribution to Tree Culture in New Zealand from 1896 to 1909, in
Australias Ever-Changing Forests, vol. 6, Proceedings of the Eighth National Conference on Australian Forest
History, ed. Brett J. Stubbs, Jane Lennon, Alison Specht, and John Taylor (Canberra: Australian Forest History
Society, 2012), 20124.
203
ideas to colonial contexts. Potts, in the 1860s, was one of the first to bring this
range of responses to bear on the local situation in Canterbury and elsewhere
in New Zealand.
The historical study of New Zealands forest legislation remains patchy and
is still dominated by Michael Roches research, done over 30 years ago.119
More recently, James Beattie has placed the New Zealand evidence within a
broader, and primarily British imperial, context, though with German influences
as an aside.120 The present paper, by looking exclusively at forestry concerns in
the 1860s, and especially at those of Potts in Canterbury, has concentrated on
one small part of this overall picture. A couple of absences are worth mentioning.
Absent, firstly, has been the suggestion for New Zealand to have a Board of
Woods and Forests and a Conservator of Forests, as was put forward by
William Lauder Lindsay after his visit to Otago of 186162.121 This has not been
mentioned because I have found no evidence that Potts had heard of the man
or his writings. Even in Otago, there seems to have been little awareness or
interest in Lindsays forestry proposals during the nineteenth century. I have
referred to Otago Provincial Council discussions on bush reserves of 1868, for
Potts and others outside Otago knew of these. But I believe that Canterbury and
Otago responses at this time, rather than being symbiotic, were independently
derived from Victorian developments.
Absent, secondly, is any mention of forestry practices in British India. There were
certainly old India hands in New Zealand in the 1860s with knowledge of the
Indian forest service. Beattie has instanced two Canterbury men: JohnCracroft
Wilson, who arrived at Lyttelton two weeks before Potts in 1854, and De Renzie
James Brett, who arrived in 1865.122 Nabob Wilson served with Potts both as
an MPC and an MHR and shared many interests with him, but, for all that,
there is nothing in Potts remarks suggesting he had much awareness of Indian
forestry, or that it influenced his thought in the 1860s. I do, however, refer to
the influence on Potts and others of George Perkins Marsh.
Environmental historians debate whether the origins of conservation are more
meaningfully traced back to the influence of Man and Nature or (as Richard
Grove would have it) to the concerns of imperial servants in India and elsewhere
119 Presented, most notably, in Roche, History of New Zealand Forestry.
120 Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety, 14348.
121 W. L. Lindsay, The Place and Power of Natural History in Colonization, with Special Reference to Otago
(Dunedin: YMCA, 1862); W. L. Lindsay, On the Conservation of Forests in New Zealand, Journal of Botany
British and Foreign 6 (1868): 3846. See also James Beattie, Scottish Environmentalism and the Improvement
of Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, in Landscape/Community: Perspectives from New Zealand, ed. Tony
Ballantyne and Judith A. Bennett (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005), 4356.
122 See James Beattie, Making Home, Making Identity: Asian Garden Making in New Zealand, 1850s1930s,
Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 31, no. 2 (2011): 13959.
204
in the British Empire.123 My research confirms the influence of Marsh in New

Zealand by the 1860s, but it was only in the 1870s (and then powerfully so) that
Indian practice began to affect the countrys forest legislation and its ideas of
conservation.
Graeme Wynn, whom I referred to in my introduction, published a second
article on New Zealand forest history in 1979. As with his first article, this
concentrated on the New Zealand Forest Act of 1874, but it also looked a little
harder at precedent events and at settlers like Potts, Travers, and ONeill.
Through the work of this well-informed and essentially conservative minority
in the pioneering population of the colony, Wynn wrote, ideas emerging
from the experience of environmental exploitation and ecological disturbance
elsewhere were superimposed upon the primal encounter between man and the
land in New Zealand.124 In a third article by Wynn, published 25 years later,
he wondered if his early work had overstressed the role of Man and Nature in
informing these settlers, when in fact New Zealanders might have built their
understanding, at least in part, on grounds other than Marsh.125
By closer tracking of the situation in Canterbury in the 1860s, we can now
better see precisely what was superimposed on what, and the order in which this
occurred. In my analysis, Victorian legislation and Marshs book were the key
external influences that structured the concern about forests and conservation
that Potts, most notably, felt.126 They provided the syntax, but the substance
was a local response to ongoing change in a local environment. What Potts
and others expressed in the 1860s was based in the first instance upon what
they themselves experienced: that is, upon forest and fire, waste and shortage,
development and opportunity.
Looked at this way, it is not incorrect to view Potts motion of 1868 and his
views at the time on native forest conservation as proto-environmentalism. It
can, however, be restricting. What I have wanted to show through a case study
123 Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins
ofEnvironmentalism, 16001860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
124 Graeme Wynn, Pioneers, Politicians and the Conservation of Forests in Early New Zealand, Journal of
Historical Geography 5, no. 2 (1979): 187.
125 Graeme Wynn, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in Environmental History, Environment
and History 10 (2004): 144.
126 The other overseas influences noted in 2004 by Wynn relate to the 1870s, several years after the impact
of Marshs work in New Zealand had begun. In my assessment, they strengthened Marshs case, but they were
taken on board later and were, essentially, supplementary evidence to that which Marsh had already provided.
Nelson engineer Arthur Dobsons article On the Destruction of Shingle-Bearing Rivers, Transactions of
the New Zealand Institute 4 (1871): 15357, as Wynn indicated in 2004, fuses Marshs ideas, Dobsons own
experience and local understanding of the processes involved, as already interpreted by his German-trained
brother-in-law, geologist and explorer Julius von Haast. The Dobson, Haast, and Potts families were very
closeArthur Dobsons brothers later married two of Potts daughtersand no doubt they shared insights
about the local environment gained both from their own observation and by the application of ideas culled
from what they read.
205
of Canterbury province is that, at least in the 1860s, concern for the native
environment was primarily an aspect of concern for colonial development,
and that conservation of native forests was primarily a counterpoint to exotic
tree-planting. There are major differences between the priorities of nineteenthcentury actors and twenty-first-century analysts of their ideas and actions.
Nineteenth-century perspectives need to be identified and understood before
any selective plucking of evidence for the origins of modern conservation.
Fuller understanding of the complexity of concerns about the wastage of native
forests in the 1860s may help us to situate New Zealands present, and ongoing,
ambivalence towards conservation and growth. Study of this particular decade
is, more certainly, a necessary backdrop to the examination of changes later
in the nineteenth century. The years between 1870 and 1900 witnessed not
only the states growing sense of responsibility for native forest conservation
and exotic timber production, but also a distinct shift in settler responses to
native forests.127 I hope in a subsequent paper to show how, in the remaining
two decades before his death in 1888, Potts actions and writings continued to
reflect, and contributed to, these changes.
127 Star, Native Forest and the Rise of Preservation in New Zealand.
206

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International Review of Environmental History is published by ANU Press

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Maohong Bao, Peking University

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About the Journal

International Review of Environmental History is published by ANU Press

Maohong Bao, Peking University

Tom Isern, North Dakota State University

About the Journal

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Overuse for commercial, recreational,

Other natural or man-made factors

Quantifying threats: The second generation

International Review of Environmental History Volume 1, 2015

International Review of Environmental History Volume 1, 2015

academic institutions were tasked with producing a chapter on invasive species.

Editorial Board.63 He does not specifically remember handling the submission,

63 Anonymous, masthead in BioScience 44 (1994), number nine and following.

International Review of Environmental History Volume 1, 2015

Precious Heritage version:

Like their precursors a generation (by reference) removed, Wilcove et al.

66 Wilcove et al., Quantifying Threats, 608609.

Figure 1: Detail from the first page of Wilcove et al. (1998).

69 Wilcove et al., Quantifying Threats, 614.

International Review of Environmental History Volume 1, 2015

Precious Heritage version: