The time has arrived in the history of our colony when our scenery should be preserved, when the historic and beautiful places should be for all time conserved, and when we should do something to protect the thermal springs, which are of so great value to the country, from being destroyed and from falling into the hands of private individuals.
European settlers in New Zealand struggled to rework the indigenous landscape. They wanted the trappings of civilised society they had left behind, not the wild and savage landscape of the new country. For many, the land and its bounty was a resource to be exploited. The forest was a source of timber for houses and fences; its removal was a constructive process of turning 'wasteland' into 'farm land'. Rocky peaks and swamps were of little value, useful at best for compensating Maori for the loss of more profitable lands.
Even before systematic colonisation began in 1840, New Zealand had been promoted in British publications as a wild, scenic, romantic wonderland – and a place of extremes. Guidebooks responded to the growing Victorian appetite for travel, and they marketed flora and fauna and the iconic 'old-time Maori'. These interests also reflected the European fashion for the picturesque and the perception of the 'wild and primitive' romantic landscape as the antidote to the increasingly artificial and corrupt urban life of industrialised society. According to this idea, wild places were not only beautiful but could serve as areas of physical recreation and mental and spiritual rejuvenation.
Kennedy's Bush
Between the 1880s and the 1920s local scenery preservation societies and other pressure and interest groups became active. Most scenery preservation societies were urban and focussed on the maintenance of town belts and urban reserves, such as Christchurch's Kennedy's Bush.
Others had broader interests. In 1898 the Nelson Society called for the creation of a national park in the Rai Valley. This was New Zealand's first major public campaign to create a national park.
Politician Harry Ell was the strongest advocate of scenery preservation in the early 20th century. He raised the issue of legislative protection for the environment in Parliament more than 20 times between 1901 and 1903 alone. His call for the reservation of 'representative' areas of forest got limited political support. He could not convince Richard Seddon to include preservation of forests for aesthetic and ecological as well as tourism reasons in the 1903 Scenery Preservation Bill. Conservation was fine in theory. In practice it was still alien to the notion of appropriate use of productive land in a frontier society.
Maori had mixed feelings about the Scenery Preservation Act 1903. Politician Hone Heke Ngapua welcomed it as a way to protect totara and prevent the loss of more kauri forest, but he objected to the way compensation was made available to Maori. The value of Maori lands, he argued, should be assessed not by the Native Land Court but by the same courts that assessed general lands.
R.C. Bruce spent many years in the 19th century sailing on British, colonial and American merchant ships, interspersed with spells on the Otago and Queensland goldfields. His 1914 memoir, Reminiscences of a wanderer (written under the name 'Able Seaman' and published by Whitcombe & Tombs), is a ripping yarn of a nomadic labouring life at sea and on land.
Sketch of birdlife at Tutira by Herbert Guthrie-Smith.
An internationally acclaimed classic of ecological writing, William Herbert Guthrie-Smith's Tutira: the story of a New Zealand sheep station (1921) was New Zealand's first major environmentalist publication.
The Scenery Preservation Commission was disbanded in 1906 because the government had found that some 'simpler machinery was necessary to more effectively carry out the purposes of the Act'. It also seems that the commission's enthusiasm for reservations clashed with the dominant idea that farming and forestry were more important than preserving scenery. Opponents such as sawmillers, local bodies and farmers who saw it as depriving them of timber, land and revenue viewed the commission's annual expenses of around ₤2000 as excessive.
