New Zealand: Land Before Time

About 130 million years ago, in the mid-to-late Jurassic period, the land that today comprises New Zealand was torn away from the southern supercontinent of Gondwana.

Because this split occurred prior to the evolution of marsupials and other mammals, and because New Zealand was so far removed from other land masses, it meant that throughout nearly its entire existence New Zealand would be devoid of mammalian life.

Other than a native bat, which presumably somehow flew here in geologically recent times, and sea mammals such as seals, New Zealand has gone through it's evolutionary past in relative isolation form the rest of the world and with out the impact that the advance of mammals has had elsewhere. As a result New Zealand has one of the worlds most unique ecosystems. In fact about 80% of the flora and fauna in New Zealand occurs only in New Zealand and no where else.

FORESTS

A walk through New Zealand's remaining native forests is in some ways like a real life "Jurassic park", and gives some indication of what the world was like millions of years ago. The progenitors of New Zealand's forests stemmed from Gondwana and its existing species have developed in relative isolation from the changes that have occurred in forests elsewhere in the world. In some areas massive kauri trees with diameters of over twelve feet wide still scrape the sky. Much of the forest is filled with the dense foliage of strange tree ferns that look to those who are not used to them like overgrown house plants.

BIRD LIFE

In the absence of mammals, birds came to occupy a dominant role in New Zealand's ecosystem. Up until just a few hundred years ago the largest herbivore in the New Zealand's forests was the moa, a giant flightless bird which reached 12 feet in height and weighed up to 550 pounds. Prior to human contact the Moa's only predator was the Hasst's eagle, the largest predatory bird to have lived, with a wing span of up to ten feet.

Today New Zealand's bird life remains exotic, with ground dwelling parrots, kiwis and other flightless birds. I found it particularly strange to be in an alpine environment in which snow occurs year round and at the same time being surrounded by group of Keas, large parrots that have adapted to living in the mountains.

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New Zealand's exotic flora and fauna are a major draw

for foreign travellers, however, the fact that these creatures have had no inherited defences against human predation, or against the other animals which humans introduced into their environment, has made them especially vulnerable. Both the Moa and the Hasst's eagle's extinctions are attributed to hunting and forest clearance by the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori, who for several hundred years shared New Zealand's environment with these giant birds. Only recently has the devastation that the impact of European settlers and the animals that they introduced have had on New Zealand's ecosystem begun to be understood. Today, travellers that arrive to New Zealand by airplane are run through a rigorous search and screening process. Having your bags run through a machine and searched is something we are all getting used to, but in New Zealand their primary focus is not drugs or terrorist threats, it's invasive species. My tent was quarantined until they could determine that the tiny grass seeds that they detected were not a potentially threat to native species.