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public, business and scientific life, 118 the country as a whole had not yet played a significant role
in conservation practices, nor were its people concerned in the same way about the state of the
environment as the ‘Green Kiwi’ is today: 119
I feel sorry that in this colony there is not more interest taken in nature and its resources; I do not
mean that people should follow it as a pursuit, but more as a recreation, in leisure time. Through
the extermination of forests, birds are forced to disappear; and it is a waste of timber, where the
soil is too poor for agriculture and pasture, to burn and destroy the young trees for the purpose of
getting a few large ones, or kauri gum, all of which might be secured without this wanton
destruction, and thus save the bush and its useful inhabitants, of which we could learn a great deal
by observation.
In conclusion, I should respectively urge the necessity of effort to preserve the useful birds
of New Zealand, which are of so much importance to the colony; and if this paper is the means of
inducing anyone to interest himself in that direction, I shall be well pleased. 120
These sentiments appear all the more serious when one considers his observations after numerous
years exploring near uninhabited wilderness, where native birds once lived in greater numbers,
only to find several years later on his second visit that more birds had disappeared, and others had
become rare due to the destruction brought by the arrival of new colonists, leaving the country in
the process with an unwanted distinction: “[I]n keinem Lande, das ich bereiste, sah ich die Vögel
so schnell verschwinden, wie in Neu-Seeland.” 121
His most important paper on the state of New Zealand’s environment appeared in 1891
under the title “Die Fauna Neuseelands und der Einfluss der Civilisation auf ihr rasches
Verschwinden”, in which he bemoans not only the introduction of introduced pests (and foreign
birds for that matter) and the careless and needless felling of forests at the hands of new
immigrants, but also the use of native birds as a food source by many colonists and Maori:
So wie sich die von Europa importirten Vögel vermehren, besonders die Spatzen […], so
vermindern sich die einheimischen Vögel, welche dem Vordringen der Cultur nicht gewachsen
sind.
Mit jedem Schiffe kommen neue Ansiedler, ein Stück Urwald nach dem andern wird
geschlagen, sogar der mächtigste Baum muss sich vor der Axt beugen. Wird zum Beispiel heuer
ein Stück Wald geschlagen, so bleiben die Bäume liegen und trocknen bis zum nächsten
Hochsommer, dann werden sie an einem windigen Tage angezündet, das Feuer greift rasch um
sich, erfasst auch oft den stehenden Wald und brennt so Tage lang, gerade in der Brutzeit der
118 See Marr et al., Crown Laws, 259-90, 416-20.
119 Reischek, for example, put his conservation failures in part down to a necessary reliance on others: “I am sorry I
did not succeed in all I intended to do for this institution re live birds I did all I could to make it a success but having
to depend also on other people who did not take the same interest in the matter unabled [sic] my success” (Andreas
Reischek, “Letter to the Council of the Auckland Institute, 25 July 1888, Auckland”, in: Nolden, German and
Austrian Naturalists, 165).
120 Reischek, “Habits of New Zealand Birds”, 104.
121 Reischek, “Ornithologische Beobachtungen”, 197.
249