You are currently viewing Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision: Hope for the Future!

Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision: Hope for the Future!

The Seventh Generation Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision

The Seventh Generation Principle is to think of the seventh generation coming after you in all your actions, while being informed of the seven generations that came before. This vision allows us to project the ecological baseline of what was written down seven generations ago by European explorers as our Banks Peninsula ecological vision for the future.

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua: ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.’

Māori whakataukī (proverb)
The Seventh Generation

The Seventh Generation Principle in action – watch Marie share her vision for Banks Peninsula

Pātaka Project

The Banks Peninsula Pātaka Project is an over arching vision for Banks Peninsula that is holistic and encompasses human, economic, environment and history. The Pātaka Project is in its development stages and Marie Haley from The Seventh Generation has been supporting and developing this project from the outset.

The Pātaka Project sits alongside the Seventh Generation Principle and the Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision, and can support regenerative tourism and regenerative farming on Banks Peninsula, as well as protecting and enhancing historic sites.

The Seventh Generation has presented the idea of a Quiet Park for Banks Peninsula under Quiet Parks International. And supports a Dark Sky park, to reduce light pollution from Christchurch City and development on Banks Peninsula.

Maori Settlement of Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū – Banks Peninsula

Rākaihautū was the first Polynesian (early Maori) explorer, 7-800 years ago, naming Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū (Banks Peninsula). Te Pātaka, meaning the storehouse or food basket, of Rākaihautū.

This name was for the abundance of kai (food) that was available, with Te Kete Ika o Rākaihautū (Lake Ellesmere), the fish basket of Rākaihautū, teaming with tuna (eel), flounder and other fish and wetland bird life.

Akaroa Tours TRENZ
The Seventh Generation – Natural and Cultural History Tours.

Banks Peninsula Geology

Banks Peninsula was formed through millions of years of volcanic activity, creating three main volcanoes, Lyttleton, Mt Herbert and Akaroa. At 2.5 times the height it is today, this landform was an island for a very long time, only joining onto mainland New Zealand with sediment being pushed down from the glaciers of the Southern Alps in the last major glaciation.

Sea cliffs of Banks Peninsula Birdlings Flat beach
The stunning sea cliffs of Banks Peninsula from the Birdlings Flat beach.

Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision – Seven Generations Ago

When Europeans started to visit and live on Banks Peninsula they found a place abundant with wildlife and forest, after several hundred years of Maori settlement Banks Peninsula still had forest from summit to sea over most of it.

When explorers to Akaroa in 1840 found white sand under the waterfalls of the side streams, with no sedimentation and erosion that we see today. They found the forest to be almost impenatrable with thick undergrowth that made travel inland almost impossible.

Many species of large and flightless birds had gone extinct, such as the moa and Haast eagle, but forest birds, sea and shorebirds and burrowing petrels were still plentiful. Captain Cook (1770) called the New Zealand birdsong the most melodious music he had ever heard, and he reported still being able to hear it two and a half miles out to sea. Birds called all day, and all night.

European hunters would hunt birds for sport and food, taking dozens of wood pigeons in a day, a young boy shot the last saddleback on Banks Peninsula in Goughs Bay in the early 1900’s.

D’Urville (1840) reported being able to catch more fish in a seine net than his crew could eat and krill inches thick floating on the top of the water in Dunedin Harbour.

Wellington settlers (1840’s) said that the whales kept them awake with the sound of their mating. How’s that for a future Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision?

Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision
Kanuka is host to a wonderful array of life including these spectacular geckos.

Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision of Destruction

Europeans bought with them their worldview, of domination over nature, of agricultural productivity as being superior to ‘wasted land’ of forest, wetland and natural places. This is understandable when you look at the number of famines and crop failures they had experienced through the Little Ice Age, where in a populated place such as Europe food supply and security was the difference between life and death, war and peace.

Dubious land purchases such as the French Langois purchase of Banks Peninsula gave rise to the first planned European settlement in the South Island, in what was becoming a race of colonisation in the Pacific between the worlds super powers at the time.

The French settlers were promised 5 acres of land per man, so long as they made it productive, once it was cleared of forest and deemed productive they then had the opportunity to purchase more land. They began the forest clearance.

At the peak there were 17 active sawmills on Banks Peninsula, where the timber was sent to Christchurch to build the city, this was the only good sized stand of hardwood forest close to Christchurch. By 1930, 99% of the forest was cleared. Leaving only difficult trees in valleys and under bluffs remaining.

Christchurch to Akaroa road old totara tree
Stunning scenes at Montgomery Reserve.

Hinewai Reserve a Different Kind of Ecological Vision

In the 1980’s a botanist, Hugh Wilson, was sent to Banks Peninsula to undertake a vegetation survey, he was amazed to find a rich representation of the original pre-European forest. The different trees and shrubs, grasses and herbs had held on, on the cliffs and in places sheep and fire could not reach.

He had a quite different Banks Peninsula ecological vision (see the video here), a little reserve where nature could be allowed to regenerate with minimal interference from man. This is not a do-nothing approach that some people might believe, but decades of weed and pest control, communication, track maintenance, boundary gorse control and holding onto a vision when neighbours all around were calling him crazy.

Hinewai grew, from 109ha to 1600ha+ that it is today, and it grew up, and it grew dense. Through gorse, a Scottish introduced invasive weed that infested farmland. Gorse grew through pasture, and native seedlings grow through gorse and slowly the succession led the way for people to see that this crazy idea was practical and would work, and neighbours started to adopt this approach, mostly through the inability to manage gorse. And a revolution of Banks Peninsula land management unfolded.

Hinewai Reserve Hugh Wilson and Marie Haley
Hinewai Reserve Hugh Wilson and The Seventh Generation Storyteller Marie Haley

Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision

The Seventh Generation Principle

The Seventh Generation Principle is an American Indian Principle from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, that you should think of the seventh generation coming after you in all your actions, while being informed of the seven generations that came before.

This vision allows us to project the ecological baseline of what was written down seven generations ago by European explorers as our vision for the future for Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula.

Just think, Hinewai Reserve has happened in only one generation, from gorse infested farmland to a internationally recognised rewilding, regeneration project that is inspiring people from all over the globe, and land managers across Banks Peninsula. What can be achieved in a Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision in seven generations?

This Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision in the Destination Management Plan

The founding philosophy of The Seventh Generation Tours has been included in the Banks Peninsula Te Pātaka o Rakaihautu Destination Management Plan, that we protect for seven generations coming after us and anchor ourselves deeply to our landscapes, stories and cultural connections to place, creating a deep foundation for a Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision – this is what my life and educational tours are all about:

According to Haley, 10 “if we look to natural systems and indigenous ways of knowing, we can see that a resilient system has a strong vitality or life force (mauri), it is healthy, and humans that live in that system are healthy. When we know where we are from and build strong connections to place (turangawaewae), we are able to share this knowledge with others (maanakitanga), and develop a strong sense of guardianship (kaitiakitanga) for this place and culture, making decisions that will sustain it for many generations into the future.”

Other Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision

While conservation organisations have created shorter term 2050 Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision statements, and others projects look to some date far into the future, such as 500 year visions, the seventh generation principle keeps the vision relevant and real, so it can be owned by those who wish to engage with it. A seven generation baseline is achievable as a vision for the future.

A seventh generation Banks Peninsula ecological vision is primarily achievable as there hasn’t been any major extinctions of species that would have been found on Banks Peninsula seven generations ago, the plant and bird life can be replicated, about 1/3 of the forest had been cleared already, as we will need to continue with some agriculturally productive land. Looking back is the best way to inform the future

Seven generations ago there were flocks of kaka on Banks Peninsula, kereru that migrated to and from the West Coast for the abundance of food, crayfish so big that the size is unbelievable to us today.

Charles Meryon Akaroa 1845
By Charles Meryon, Akaroa 1845 – in this photo you can see the fish jumping and the fishermen working nets along the shoreline, not possible today!

Ecological Baselines and Shifting Baselines

The trouble with human memory is it forgets so easily, kids say today ‘I caught a big fish’ and hold up their fingers, their great-grandad might of measured with their arms, seven generations ago it might have been a measure of body length. We need a firm baseline, that states this was how big the fish were, and we need to shift the baseline forward so that with each generation the fish get bigger again.

Ecological restoration is something that is generations in the making, it also removes the sense of guilt and burden that many young people feel today, that this is a problem that must all be fixed right now. The young people of today did not cause this problem and so it should not be to them alone to fix it.

The Seventh Generation Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision is one of hope for the future, to inspire people to become the change they wish to see in the world. A vision that can become your own, and guide you. It’s not prescriptive, because the best conservation projects I’ve witnessed are those that happen naturally, organically, when the time is right, from individual efforts at making this world a better places for generations to come.

Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision for the future
Banks Peninsula Ecological Vision for the future/

The Seventh Generation Tours Akaroa

If you have enjoyed what you’ve read, this is just the beginning!! Come on a tour with me to find out so much more, to be inspired, and reconnect to nature within. I offer school history tours (and school tours for subjects: French, tourism, geography, outdoor education and nature based) as well as private tours, group bookings and standard tours. I teach university groups, university professors, conferences… Tell me what your group is interested in and I’ll design the tour for you (so long as I get to tell some amazing stories along the way). Book Now

Marie Haley

I am your guide, Marie Haley, I was born and raised on Banks Peninsula. The seventh generation direct decedent of Akaroa’s very first French settler. I grew up on the family farm following in the footsteps of my Grandfather, and his Grandfather before.