Letting Nature Do the Work: Lessons from Hinewai
On New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, botanist Hugh Wilson’s “minimal interference” strategy has worked to restore native forest from gorse-infested farmland.
Dr. Hugh Wilson is one of the most delightful humans you’ll ever meet. Hugh is the manager of the Hinewai Reserve on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and the subject of the wonderful documentary film Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest. When we recently visited Hinewai, Hugh was using a push mower to cut the grass on the path to the visitors’ center. He is locally famous for his fossil-fuel-free lifestyle, which includes bicycling into town for groceries. When asked about using an e-bike to help with the hills, he replied through his snow-white beard with a twinkle in his eyes, “I’m not old enough yet for an e-bike!”
What sets Hinewai apart from the many other public and private nature reserves in New Zealand is Hugh’s “minimal interference” management strategy. A botanist by training, his insight was that invasive gorse, Ulex europaeus, could act as a nursery for native forest. Rather than actively trying to remove or suppress gorse, the reserve has largely left it in place, focusing instead on letting nature do most of the work to regenerate native forest on steep hillsides that were formerly grazed.
The story of Hinewai is beautifully told by Happen Films, who explain why they’ve chosen to make their documentary free to view:
Forest regeneration is one of the most important actions that needs to be taken globally to address the environmental crises we’re facing today. Our hope is that people from all over the world will draw inspiration from what’s happening at Hinewai Reserve, which is why we’ve made the film free to view.
We can draw inspiration from Hinewai on many levels, but there are three main lessons that I’d like to highlight:
- We can give nature a chance to regenerate, even on severely degraded land.
- We can better manage habitat by carefully studying ecosystems and choosing minimal intervention strategies to achieve our landscape goals.
- We can help preserve native plants to provide seed banks that allow natural regeneration to occur with less effort.
The Hinewai Reserve provides a glimpse into the natural history of the Banks Peninsula-and shows how a natural history can become a natural future. Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū (The Storehouse of Rākaihautū) is the Maori name for the peninsula, recognizing the abundance of mahinga kai (natural resources that produce food) that Rākaihautū provided for his descendants using a magical kō (digging stick) after he brought them in the Uruaokapuarangi waka (canoe) to the South Island. European settlers had a different vision for the Banks Peninsula, removing between 98% and 99% of the forest to graze sheep and cattle on marginally productive pasture.
Although a very small percentage of the original forest remained, it is enough to provide seeds to regenerate the whole peninsula, in Hugh’s considered opinion. The peninsula was nearly completely deforested, he explains, “But all the time forest was regenerating in gullies despite everybody’s efforts to keep it out because they wanted grass for the animals. The production and dispersal of seed by nature, we completely underestimate it; there’s nowhere on the Banks Peninsula where this [regeneration] wouldn’t happen, even if you were some distance from existing seed sources.”
Nature is constantly regenerating — in many cases, all we need to do to recreate rich natural food webs is to stop interfering with natural processes. Nature itself does the hard work: actually regrowing a healthy and diverse plant and animal population well adapted to a specific environment. Not only can native forests regenerate on the hillsides of this New Zealand peninsula, but native plants can regenerate in suburban and urban gardens everywhere on Earth. We can take hope from Hinewai that it isn’t too late to bring nature back in our own neighborhoods.
If we look closely, we can see natural regeneration happening on small scales, in vacant lots, or in our own yards. Many landscapes are “disturbed” in the botanical sense, meaning the native plant and animal species that would naturally live there have been killed. Other species, often non-native “weeds” and “pests,” are able to gain a toe-hold and start the process of colonizing bare soil. Usually, these “pioneer” species will yield to a diverse mix of native plants and animals if conditions stabilize.
We can study and learn from this process of succession to become better stewards of land under our care. As a botanist, Hugh understood that leaving gorse on the land would help the forest regenerate by providing shade and shelter for native seedlings. At the same time, he knew that he needed to prevent heavy browsing pressure from goats, sheep, and cows needed to be controlled; otherwise, the native forest wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow. The second major lesson from Hinewai is having the wisdom to understand when less is more in terms of managing habitat to allow nature to regenerate.
Where I live in Maine, simply not mowing our lawns allows native forests to regrow. If we don’t need a lawn, allowing perennial plants to establish and then observing the natural succession to mature forest is probably the most sustainable and satisfying way to manage our local landscape, reconnecting our future to our natural past. But if we don’t want to live in a forest, then we need to mow. We can still encourage native annuals to thrive and provide food for pollinating insects by being strategic in what we sow and when we mow. No Mow May may be a bit too simplistic; it’s better practice to establish permanent areas to cultivate native plants (the “Homegrown National Park approach) or a wildflower meadow. A key insight from the experience at Hinewai is to observe our local ecosystem and think carefully before making drastic interventions.
The third important lesson from Hinewai is the value of preserving native plants and biodiversity. By luck, on the Banks Peninsula, the ranchers and farmers could not extirpate 100% of the native forest; some remained in nooks and crannies. It is from these remaining reserves of wild areas that plants and animals can recolonize habitat that they’ve lost. If we own our own land, or if we join with others to form a land conservation organization, we can play an important role in preserving the native biodiversity of our own ecoregion.
The entomologist Dr. Douglas Tallamy is a kindred spirit to Dr. Hugh Wilson. Along with Michelle Alfandari, Doug founded the Homegrown National Park project to regenerate biodiversity by planting native species. What Hinewai is doing with hundreds of acres, smaller landowners can do with hundreds of square feet. Replacing a small lawn with native shrubs or an annual flower bed provides a haven for native insects, birds, and more. By doing our part to grow native plants that provide habitat for native insects and animals, we can ensure that we don’t lose species that may be critically important but that we haven’t learned enough about to appreciate their value. Although large areas of contiguous wilderness are essential for some species to thrive, small patches of native plants provide a wellspring for nature to draw from when regenerating larger areas.
I hope you’ll have the opportunity to watch Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest. May it encourage you to explore ideas that traditionalists think foolish, inspire you to dream about what land under your care could become, and enlighten you to create sustainable habitat for a better future.
References and Further Reading
- Gorse for the trees: How one man brought back a forest, RNZ
- Watch Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest, Happen Films
- Hinewai Reserve
- Kōrero Tuku Iho (Our History), Te Taumutu Rūnanga
- Mahinga kai/mahika kai, Environment Canterbury Regional Council
- Uruaokapuarangi, Wikipedia
- Historic deforestation and the fate of endemic invertebrate species in streams, New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research
- Banks Peninsula zone biodiversity, Environment Canterbury Regional Council
- No Mow May? Good intentions, bad approach, critics say, AP News
- Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard, Smithsonian Magazine
- Plant a Wildflower Meadow, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, The University of Texas at Austin
- Homegrown National Park
Originally published at https://sustainablepractice.substack.com.
