WE LIVE IN A NATURAL world, dependent upon it for air, water and food. This is true whether our sustenance comes from the kitchen garden or the super-market.

Early settlers on GBI found a forested land, trees in excess, and seemingly unlimited marine bounty. A natural world in which they were their own masters. Survival was predicated on exploiting naturally occurring resources.

A look back in Aotea’s history shows a pattern of demand followed by extraction followed by depletion - tall timber, gold, copper, whaling, cray and fin fishing. Profits from these activities mostly went elsewhere. Farming the marginal land on Aotea produced diminishing returns as fertility declined.

Even when it is apparent that a process is failing we are naturally resistant to change – repetition of the old ways is the easier track to follow.

New ideas require new grooves to be cut – not always a comfortable process. And it is easier to oppose change than be open to new outcomes.

Conservation in its essence offers new outcomes. However the word has become a loaded term – conjuring up images of high-handed Government actions and regulations seemingly insensitive to the smaller scale of life;

Yet by definition conservation is basically careful use of self-renewing or in fact self-managing resources. Conservation equals custody, husbandry, protection, safe-guarding, economy. In our case the ecosystems we are looking to conservatively manage require considerable repair.

Restoration comes before conservation. Its coalface ethos deals first with the principal agents of abuse.

On GBI landmass humans no longer occupy that position, that belongs to the introduced mammalian predators. Rats, feral cats, rabbits and pigs continue to impact on endemic species.

As the land of the old Great Barrier sells, it does so at a price that inevitably brings in new blood – new values, new notions of what the responsibilities are of holding land with high natural values.

Change is in the air – more than 60% of private land on GBI is now held in offshore hands. The view looking in is quite different from ours looking out. Many are recognizing what we have here – a potential island ark.

Do we have self-sustaining resources that could be used rather than abused; nutured into resilient health and managed for the economic and social benefit of the Island residents. We think so.