A local oral history of environmental change in Pelorus / Te Hoiere, Marlborough

Abstract

The Pelorus/Te Hoiere was announced as an ‘Exemplar catchment’ for the purposes of restoration, by the Minister of Conservation in late 2019. The catchment restoration project is to be managed by the Kotahitanga mō te Taiao Alliance (the ‘Kotahitanga Alliance’) as a partnership with the local community. The Kotahitanga Alliance was formed to collaboratively address issues of environmental concern across the top of the South Island/Te Tau Ihu. Ngāti Kuia, Marlborough District Council (MDC), and the Department of Conservation (DoC), have come together to achieve environmental, social, cultural and economic improvements for Pelorus/Te Hoiere, by involving communities and building partnerships across the catchment. As part of the overarching project, the Kotahitanga Alliance wants to start to understand people’s memories of environmental change – acknowledging and recording these stories will aid the Kotahitanga Alliance in developing a collaborative landscape catchment program. Biophysical science along with local histories have identified significant changes to terrestrial and estuarine ecosystems since European settlement. However, it is not known whether those changes, particularly in more recent years, are evident in lived experiences. The socio-ecological ‘shifting baselines’ phenomenon occurs where gradual environmental degradation gets progressively accepted as each generation experiences their place. This is important to understand, so as to help inform community discussions about the need for restoration goals This research is a pilot study of 10 interviewees from the wider Pelorus/Te Hoiere catchment conducted in January 2020, to get insights into the nature of shifting baselines. The purpose of this preliminary report is to describe the catchment setting, outline the methodology and provide some initial insights from the interviews, which suggest that there are contrasting beliefs about the health of the river and estuary. A detailed analysis of the interviews is planned as part of a Master of Applied Science thesis at Lincoln University in 2021, and additional interviews may be undertaken over the next 12 months to achieve that goal.