Category: Environment

Here in Te Whanganui o Hei Mercury Bay, kauri was first ‘discovered’ by Lieutenant James Cook in 1769. However, it wasn’t the tree he spotted, it was the kauri gum floating in amongst the mangroves in the Whitianga River. He presumed that the gum was from the mangroves.

It was from Marion de Fresne, a Frenchman, that Europe learned of the mighty kauri. He sailed into the Bay of Islands in May 1772 and with the help of local iwi felled trees for masts. Unfortunately, these timbers never made it to their destination, the crew abandoning them within a half a mile of the shore. The sailors returned to Europe in July of the same year empty-handed.

Now more than ever sustainability, or the lack thereof, is an issue at the forefront of many of our minds. It is the issue that plagues the modern world as it affects every living being on our planet from us humans down to the plankton in our oceans. As humans, we have recently come to realise that the responsibility of the health of life on earth now relies on us and our sustainability

The interconnectedness of nature and why a holistic approach to environmental conservation is necessary When humans arrived in Aotearoa, they found a fantastic ecosystem that had evolved over millions of