Page 7 - 2008 NZ Subantarctic Islands

Biologists, ecologists, historians all agree that of all land masses,
New Zealand has suffered the greatest number of extinctions due

to human pressures. Because no mammalian predators had
evolved there, the birdlife was totally unprepared for the exotic

(in this context, exotic means “non-native”) animals humans
brought with them or for the ravages of hunting that human
beings practiced. It is not really necessary to indict humanity for

its early depredations because people’s actions were based on
ignorance and heedlessness rather than evil or selfishness. After

all, both the Maoris and the Europeans had never occupied such
an unspoiled Eden before. They were also unaware of the damage

that exotic species can wreak on an isolated environment. They
did not recognize that the islands supported a limited population

of creatures that could be shattered so quickly. By the time
extinctions were understood, tremendous damage had already
occurred.

For a time after the collision between the Maoris and the

Europeans, the natural world was not studied or valued. The
Europeans were busily “conquering” the new world and subduing

the indigenous human populations. The Maoris were desperately
defending their homes and way of life. No one noticed when the

last moa was killed. In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi between the
British and the Maoris finally ended the open conflict and assured
more rights to the Maoris than indigenous peoples usually

received at the mercies of the British and other European
explorers. Then the European period of destroying New Zealand

began in earnest as immigrants arrived in greater numbers every
year and the land was “tamed” and altered for agriculture and

animal husbandry as the Europeans knew it. Whalers and sealers
exploited the marine life until it became unprofitable due to the

declining numbers of the creatures they sought. Cities grew up in
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