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Ngā Tangata o te Marama
Graeme Atkins
Te Tira Whakamātaki has started a new series of social media posts titled 'Ngā tangata o te marama'. These will involve regularly profiling a handful of awesome people doing cool stuff for the environment and working in our communities to create a better Aotearoa for all.
The next person we are profiling in this series is Graeme Atkins.
Graeme Atkins has been working in taiao restoration in a paid capacity for 30 years now, first beginning in 1994, then became a Kaitieki Ranger for his Iwi and the Raukūmara Pae Maunga Restoration Project, and is now working as an Independent Environmental Consultant.
Often called a ‘lone ranger out east,’ the ‘Māori David Attenborough of plants,’ or the man at the coalface of conservation, Graeme knows his rohe and its environment like the back of his hand. He has worked with threatened species, plants, and animals throughout his 30 years in the conservation space and is an advocate for the Predator Free 2050 kaupapa.
Graeme was the winner of the Loder Cup in 2020, an award presented by the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai (DOC), to recognise individuals or groups who work to investigate, promote, retain, and cherish Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous flora and whose work has made a tangible difference to the protection of indigenous flora over and above their employment expectations. He was also a finalist in the New Zealander of the Year Environmental Hero Award in 2023.
We’ve asked Graeme to give us some insight into who he is, what he does, and what inspires him to do the work that he does protecting and safeguarding te taiao.
Ko wai koe? No hea koe?
Who are you? Where are you from?
Name: Graeme Atkins
Waka: Horouta, Tākitimu, & Kurahaupō
Iwi: Ngāti Porou, Rongomaiwahine
Hometown: Ruatōria (North)
Favourite food: All Kai!
Hobbies: Passion for plants (finding new plants) & Hunting
He aha tāu mahi?
What do you do?
Previously I worked for DOC as a ranger, but over the past few years, my work has been full-time with my Iwi at the coalface of the Raukūmara Pae Maunga Restoration Project as a Kaitieki Ranger. Te Raukūmara ranges are on the brink of ecological collapse. The Raukūmara Pae Maunga kaupapa is an Iwi-led response, managed by Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Ngāti Porou, working to pull our ngahere back from the brink of extinction to ensure the ecological and cultural restoration and revitalisation of the Raukūmara. This means we, the Kaitieki, actively manage the pest plants and animals that are destroying the native ecosystem to protect our taonga and help it return to its former glory.
Photo courtesy of Stuff (Diana Dobson)
He aha koe e hiahia ana ki te mahi mō te taiao
Why did you want to work for the environment?
I was brought up by my grandparents, just north of Ruatōria. After school, I would get straight off the school bus and get into weeding the big flower and vegetable gardens that they kept. I used to hate it, especially on a stinking hot day, and was jealous of all the other relations that would get on their horses and go down to the river and have a swim. My grandmother was the go-to person in the hapū for rongōa Māori, and she used to give me a big list of plants to go and get for her. I didn’t know what to get and used to just grab everything and bring it back to her, she’d then tell me “No that was this, and this is that” and through pure repetition I eventually ended up learning the plants.
I was then lucky enough to work with one of our tribal elders for three years who was ‘the man’ for rongōa medicinal plants in our area, and I learned a lot more from him. As you learn to use the plants and learn about them, for example that 80% of them only grow here [in Aotearoa] and nowhere else and that they have a whakapapa of millions of years, you get bit by the tree bug.
The tree bug is cool until you realise that these plants are now threatened, through no fault of their own, because of introduced species such as rats, possums, deer, and goats. Once you know that then you understand quickly that you need do something about the threats.
“What made me passionate about te taiao and want to work in conservation? I think it was in my blood! It’s always been my calling to work with plants.”
Graeme Atkins
Kōrero mai ki a mātou mō te kaupare kīrearea
Talk to us about pest management
I've worked with threatened species, plants and animals for 30 years, and I'm an advocate for the Predator Free 2050 kaupapa, but what I think people need to know, especially those who aren’t involved in the environment or conservation and restoration, is that when you're working with threatened species, it's all about killing things. If we want the things that are special to this country to survive and thrive, we have to stop the things that are making them rare in the first place and that involves killing things. When you're doing that mahi at the coalface, you quickly realise it's never-ending. We might clear the pest out of a reserve, but the surrounding area's untreated and the introduced animals keep pouring back in. I must have killed thousands of possums by now. I'm actually amazed we've still got lots of our birds and animals because the work is endless. We can’t keep up. So, we need new technology to help us catch up and get ahead. Tools like gene editing might be one way that we are able to keep the number of pests down.
We’ve also got to make sure that people understand the truth of whats happening out there in te taiao. The majority of Kiwis have no idea how desperate the environmental situation is. Through good communications we can let them know but also make sure that they have hope for what we can all do; there can’t be no hope for our taiao. Personally, I’ve started using social media more over the past five or six years. I just post what I’ve been getting up to each day because most people will never go into Te Raukūmara. I started by sharing some confronting images of the changes happening in Te Raukūmara due to all the uncontrolled deer and possums running amuck. Things like big trees dying and the place starting to fall to pieces. I was hoping that I wasn’t the only one who was upset about that because in my lifetime, I’ve watched Te Ruakūmara go from the Garden of Eden to the sorry state that it's in now. Those posts started a bit of a groundswell of local support and political interest. They led to the programme where we've been able to employ 44 locals, half from Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and half from Ngāti Porou - our people looking after our places.
I’ve also been posting some educational stuff and have been able to reach different audiences and demographics with those posts. I think that education is really important and that we’ve got to find ways to include our rangatahi in this mahi. I do a lot of school talks, and I have a lot of hope in our young ones. I know there's a generation of young ones under us that are excited to work in the taiao space. I think that knowledge is nothing if it’s not shared, and the more people know about our mahi, the more they might care about the taiao.
He aha te mahi e hiahiatia ana e tātau hei whakamate i ngā kīrearea me te tiaki i tō tātau taiao?
What do we need to do to kill pests and protect our environment?
I learned early on in the conservation space that there's no way one agency can do what needs to be done; the mahi is just too big. So I don't think the government can do it all alone, and I think that one of the dumbest things they have ever done was not involve the people in the mahi. So, with the Raukūmara Pae Maunga project, we, the community, have skin in the game now. When tangata whenua are doing the pest control, and they understand how urgent the need is, the conversations around pest eradication and Predator 2050 fall on more receptive ears. If Iwi and Māori aren't doing that restoration mahi, then it is harder for Iwi and Māori to grasp the concept of Predator Free 2050.
Disconnection is a huge issue. Once upon a time, our ngāhere was the be-all and end-all; it was our garden, chemist, and timber shop. We got everything from it, and so you cared for it because you were dependent on it. The reality of the times we live in now is that we're looking at six or seven generations of whānau who are disconnected from our taiao. These days, most Māori live in urban situations, so there's no connection with the taiao, and many of those practices are lost to those whānau, including all the mātauranga associated with the care of our taiao. Because the Ruakūmara Pae Maunga Restoration project is a partnership between the whānau and the Crown, there have been two or three kaumātua on each side that have just shared some real pearls of wisdom. That's why those Jobs for Nature projects, especially over our way, have been a godsend. They are connecting our people back to the taiao and our mātauranga.
We are nothing without our taiao. It doesn’t matter if you’re Māori, Chinese, or whatever. We are all connected. We are part of all these systems, not above them; that's a real Western ethos, and that’s what has got the world to where we are today with all these environmental troubles.
Without our taiao, it's all over.
Stay tuned for more profiles!
