Photos - recording change

By Geoff Walls

What makes Open Space Magazine appealing? Admit it, it’s the pictures!  In any book on nature or history, no matter how well written, it’s the illustrations we’re most drawn to.  Magazines, newspapers, TV, the cinema; all work because they’re graphic and they’re immediate. We’re mightily attracted by colour and shapes and have the imagination to match that curiosity.  This makes photography a powerful and handy tool in conservation management. We can use it to document changes and to show the causes of change.

For decades I’ve observed and measured ecological changes in many sites around New Zealand. That’s my profession. I’ve made detailed site descriptions, measured vegetation plots, done bird counts and taken samples of wood, water, soil and rock. Good robust data-gathering and analysis; lots of meticulously written reports.

What’s made the difference though has been the photos I’ve taken, and I wish I’d known that earlier. Managers, planners, landowners, legal people, friends and family have all responded far more to my photos of places, plants, animals and people than to all my written and spoken evidence. Maybe I’m a pretty hopeless writer and speaker, but I don’t think it’s that. They’ve been able to get closer to the subject through the photos.

Anyone who’s watched a piece of bush, scrub, beach or wetland over the years can tell you that changes have taken place. Sometimes quite big changes. Perhaps the titoki has died back, lancewood has begun poking through the manuka, slips have healed, the pingao has gone or the raupo has expanded dramatically.

How often are there photos to show that though? Not often. Without them, we may have many good stories but little tangible evidence. To find out how effective conservation management has been, photography can provide a wealth of information quickly and cheaply. You don’t have to be a brilliant photographer or have expensive gear, but you do need to think about what you’re recording and why.

Photos 1 & 2 below: Forest interior at Big Bush, Chatham Island.  In 1990 (Figure 1), sheep and cattle had free access and there was absolutely no undergrowth.  In 1996 (Figure 2), after being fenced for only four years, there were saplings waist high.  By 1999, when I last had a look, the undergrowth was taller than me and almost impenetrable.

Forest interior at Big Bush, Chatham Island

Forset interior at Big Bush, Chatham Island

Photo 3: The scratch marks on this totara tell us there’s something wrong in the forest: possums are numerous, probably damaging the canopy and ground cover alike.

Totara damage

Photo 4: Red mistletoe (Peraxilla tetrapetala), a highly sensitive ecological indicator, growing on a mountain beech in Kaweka Forest Park, Christmas 1998, and admired by my son Finn and his soft mate.  I recorded the recovery of this plant from a chewed stub into a flourishing beauty within five years of the start of systematic possum control. 

Even foliage within reach of deer wasn’t browsed, a sign that the hunters were effective in the area.  The lack of open flowers indicated that the tui population was seriously low.

Red Mistletoe

The most impressive evidence of change comes from photos taken from the same point but at different times.  Regeneration on a forest floor or on a fenced-off hillside shows up within a few short years, as in the photos taken at Big Bush on the Chathams.

How I wish I’d set up such photopoints in our open space covenant on D’Urville Island. Then you’d believe me when I say the frightening thickets of stinging ongaonga in the bush gullies were totally replaced by kawakawa within 10 years, and that the present wind-combed blanket of manuka now covers what used to be bare eroding clay faces.

The causes of change, and the indicators of deterioration or recovery, can be photographed too. Possum bite-marks, deer-browsed tree bases, and the size and health of saplings and highly palatable plants such as mistletoes, succulent ferns and tree fuchsia, are excellent indicators.

Forest and wetland edges are where change is often fastest and most dramatic. Every open space covenant area has such signs and sites.

So get out your camera, find a place that’ll tell a story, nail a tag to the nearest strainer and take the picture that will show your grandchildren how it used to be.


Open SpaceTM Magazine No. 50, December 2000 © QEII National Trust


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