Male Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus). (Photo: Sylvain CORDIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Male Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus). (Photo: Sylvain CORDIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

SocietySeptember 1, 2020

Tahr are magnificent creatures – but they’re destroying the landscapes we love

Guest writer
Male Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus). (Photo: Sylvain CORDIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Male Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus). (Photo: Sylvain CORDIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Himalayan tahr were introduced to New Zealand more than a century ago for sport, and they remain a popular target for hunters today. But hunting hasn’t stopped tahr numbers ballooning to an estimated 35,000 on public conservation land – far too many for the fragile ecosystem to take, writes DOC’s threatened species ambassador, Erica Wilkinson.

If you ask a Department of Conservation scientist what their favourite experience in a national park is, make sure you have a spare half hour. In Fiordland, it might be South Island robins pecking at your boots and looking up curiously, or the silhouette of long-tailed bats foraging in the sky at sunset. In Aoraki/Mount Cook you could spot a giant wētā crawling behind your bivvy or see juvenile kea learning to play. It would be epic thunder and lightning storms, beautiful starry nights, huge avalanches and rock falls.

National parks are our mainland insurance policy. They’re what more of New Zealand could look like, because they’re what New Zealand did look like. They’re like a film on pause, the characters currently spared the tragedy at the end of act two. With the greatest protection status of all conservation land, our national parks are bursting with species that, in some cases, wouldn’t still be here if not for these fragile green havens.

Globally, just over 100 countries boast parks like ours. Since Tongariro National Park was established in 1887, we have added 12 more national parks across the country, each with its own unique characteristics and ecosystems.

Aoraki Mt Cook National Park (Photo: DOC)

And now that our borders are closed and we can’t take the family to the Gold Coast, we have the chance to rediscover the places that we showcase to the world but sometimes forget – the national-scale version of how well we got to know our local walks during lockdown. There are more than 30,000 square kilometres of diverse, natural scenery on our doorstep just waiting for us to explore. They hold the remnants of our national identity, too. New Zealanders define ourselves by our love of the natural world. Today, however, 87% of New Zealanders live in urban areas. We’re more likely to recognise a blackbird or sparrow than a robin or kōkako. We can spot pine trees or gorse anywhere, but would have to Google kānuka. A lot of us experience a disconnect between our vision of New Zealandness and what we experience. That makes areas like national parks even more important.

National parks legally need to be preserved and maintained for generations to come. DOC is responsible for protecting them against the effects of a warming climate, invasive pests and predators, and habitat destruction. It’s a big job. The balance of an ecosystem can be a very fragile thing. One species taken out, or on the flipside becoming too dominant, can lead to a complete ecosystem collapse.

An adult kea posing in front of Aoraki/Mount Cook (Photo: DOC)

Take Yellowstone National Park, the first such reserve in the United States. In the early 1900s the government had the wolves in the park hunted to elimination to protect the elk. This set off something called the trophic cascade. With no apex predator to fear, the deer and elk populations boomed. This resulted in over-grazing, particularly of willows and other vegetation needed for riverbank structure – which led to heavy erosion.

With no wolves preying on them, elk could intensely graze along riverbanks, and the vegetation disappeared. Beavers lost the willows they needed to build their dams. Birds had no trees tall enough to safely nest in. Without beavers’ dams, fish weren’t thriving. As fish numbers dwindled, so did bears and foxes that relied on fish for food. Hundreds of species started to decline.

When wolves were finally brought back in the 1990s, the ecosystem eventually rebalanced, and the species bounced back. One beaver colony became nine.

We are facing a similar issue in New Zealand right now.

A young tahr eating vegetation (Photo: DOC)

In 1904, Himalayan tahr were brought to New Zealand for recreational hunting They were released in Aoraki/Mt Cook and, with no natural predators, quickly adapted to our alpine environment. Their population has boomed, and today tahr numbers exceed the level that the alpine environment can cope with. Tahr were picked up and put into our fragile ecosystem where species have not evolved with defence mechanisms to deal with mammals like this. In other places, plants might develop toxins or spines to discourage browsing. It hasn’t happened here. In autumn 2019 there were an estimated 35,000 tahr on public conservation land alone, where the maximum legally is 10,000 across all types of land. DOC, commercial hunters and contractors have since reduced their numbers but tahr have become a major threat to these alpine ecosystems. DOC is required to reduce tahr populations to the lowest possible densities in national parks to protect our species.

Just like we saw in Yellowstone with deer and elk overabundance, tahr can have a devastating effect across the landscape when their numbers are not controlled. As social animals they move in herds or mobs as they look for food. They are heavy, and compact the ground as they move, turning what was tall tussock grassland into something resembling a rough paddock no longer able to provide habitat or grow vegetation that our native species have evolved to depend on. Their faeces and urine even change the nutrient status of the soil, affecting what can grow there.

Zora Canyon in Landsborough on the West Coast in 1999 (left) and 2020 (right) showing the impact of tahr (Photos: DOC)
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    It can take decades to save an ecosystem, but not long to destroy it.

    You only need to look at areas tahr or deer have been in at high densities to realise the fight our native species are facing on top of everything else. It’s good to be clear here: there is no plan to eradicate tahr, but we need to do this control work in order to protect our native species already exhausted from battling stoats, possums, and rats.

    Believe it or not, nobody likes killing things. That is not a fun part of the job. You have to be outcome-focused, constantly reminding yourself of the conservation end goal you’re heading towards. We have a duty to protect our unique and ancient native wildlife and our reality is a huge number are on the fast track to extinction. I’m for our native species first and foremost, and in the 148,000 ha of national parks, our native species need to come first.

    Keep going!
    (Image: The Spinoff)
    (Image: The Spinoff)

    OPINIONSocietySeptember 1, 2020

    The charity conundrum: should Family First get the same status as Greenpeace?

    (Image: The Spinoff)
    (Image: The Spinoff)

    A landmark High Court decision means Greenpeace can finally have charity status. But what happens when it’s granted to political advocates you might disagree with? 

    Many people might be surprised to learn that until a few weeks ago, Greenpeace wasn’t actually classified as a charity. That’s because our charity law – relying on English court decisions from 100 years ago – had excluded organisations whose main purpose included advocating for political causes (such as changes in laws or policies). Charity, it was thought, was more about doing tangible, hands-on things like running food banks and schools, supporting people who were sick and homeless, or building churches and animal sanctuaries.

    This “political advocacy exclusion” existed mainly because it was usually too hard to tell if there was any charitable “public benefit” from an organisation’s political advocacy. How do you know whether the laws or policies an organisation advocates for – which might be highly contested – are for the public good? Both “pro-life” and “pro-choice” groups advocate for law changes they believe would benefit New Zealanders, but which side is right? And should a court really be passing judgement on matters best left to democratic processes? Rather than answer such tricky questions, the courts had put them into the “too-hard basket” and stayed out of the fray. It was easier to draw a bright line and say that advocating for political positions couldn’t be charitable.

    But then in 2014, Greenpeace won a watershed (and controversial) Supreme Court decision that abolished the political advocacy exclusion. This cracked open the door for Greenpeace and other lobby groups to gain registration as charities – and to enjoy the tax benefits and social kudos flowing from that. Greenpeace’s battle for charitable status didn’t end there though. The Supreme Court also said that advocacy groups would still need to show their advocacy benefited the public in some way, something that would be hard to prove where tricky hot-button issues are involved. Unlike before, this forced the courts to enter the political fray.

    The Charities Registration Board continued to oppose Greenpeace’s registration as a charity, effectively relying on the “too tricky/hot button issues” argument. But a few weeks ago, the High Court finally decided that Greenpeace could be a charity, recognising that its advocacy for protecting the environment and mitigating climate change undoubtedly benefitted the public.

    The recent news that Greenpeace could be a charity has been met with much approval. But following swiftly in its wake was the news last week that Family First could also be a charity. Yes, two out of three of the judges in the Court of Appeal ruled that the “family values” organisation – famous for campaigning against LGBT rights and abortion, and advocating in favour of socially conservative views on smacking, euthanasia, drug reform, and conversion therapy – “advances education” and performs charitable advocacy to the benefit of the public.

    So what are we to make of this? Well, there’s a lot we could say about this judgement, most of it not good. But for one thing, the version of Family First the majority approves of seems to be quite different to the Family First that puts itself into the public square. The court gave a tick to the “self-evidently important role of families in society and core family values” the group advocates for. Stripped of context, this sort of advocacy seems benign. But in granting Family First approval for this advocacy, the court disagreed that Family First’s focus on the “traditional family” – the union of a man and a woman through marriage and their biological children – was a bar to charitable status. This was because, the majority noted, “by far the larger part of the social groups constituting families in contemporary New Zealand … are between men and women” and that it would be “curious” if promoting this was not seen as for the public benefit just because there are other forms of family life.

    This statement is surprising, to say the least. Family First is not simply promoting the traditional family. Rather, Family First seeks to take rights away from women and the LGBTQI+ community, and grant fewer privileges to certain forms of family life. It describes other family forms as “incomplete or fabrications of the state”. For Family First, promoting the traditional family necessarily entails working against other forms of family life. The court seems quite happy to turn a blind eye to all of this when approving Family First’s advocacy work as being in the public benefit.

    Then, in the understatement of the year, the court conceded there were positions which Family First advocates for that may fall outside advocating for family and marriage as it is currently recognised in society, including their advocacy regarding divorce, alternative forms of marriage and abortion. The court hinted that this advocacy might be a problem. This is where the decision goes from confusing to unworkable, with the court giving a weak warning that Family First simply “need[ed] to bear that in mind as it determines its priorities and activities for the future”. It will be interesting to see how Family First takes account of this warning.

    The well-crafted dissenting judgement took a more robust view of Family First’s activities, with the judge recognising that Family First was essentially a lobby group whose core purpose was really to advocate on “issues of the day” such as divorce, prostitution, euthanasia and abortion. For the dissenting judge, it was difficult to see how this sort of advocacy would benefit the public.

    All that said, it’s at least possible to argue that both Greenpeace and Family First should be charities (and we mean the full-strength Family First, not the Court of Appeal’s sanitised version of it). If advocacy for a cause can be a charitable purpose, why shouldn’t it be permitted for all advocacy groups, regardless of the content of their views? Perhaps allowing more political perspectives into the charity sector might ensure a vibrant democracy. Indeed, this is the approach Australian courts have started to favour.

    Opening the gates to charitable registration this widely could, however, undermine the public’s confidence in the charitable sector. Charities might start to be seen as little more than partisan lobby groups rather than trusted organisations that truly serve the public interest. Maybe, for the charitable sector to flourish and maintain the public’s trust and confidence, it’s better to keep the definition of charity narrow and focused on activities that provide tangible benefits to people, even if it means excluding some more sympathetic organisations.

    Jane Calderwood Norton is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland School of Law. Jordan Grimmer is a junior barrister at Shortland Chambers and a tutor in equity at the University of Auckland School of Law.

    Society