The Polynesian settlement of New Zealand: catastrophe and accommodations
by
Matt McGlone
Landcare Research PO Box 69, Lincoln, 8152 New Zealand
Coauthors: Janet Wilmshurst (Landcare Research PO Box 69, Lincoln, 8152 New Zealand)

East Polynesians permanently settled New Zealand c. 800 years ago. Some hundreds of years earlier than this, transient contact may have introduced the commensal Polynesian rat (kiore). These events unleashed a cascade of ecological interactions that, within a brief time, eliminated 40% of the land bird species and an unknown but perhaps sizeable number of large invertebrates. Breeding colonies of marine mammals and birds from the mainland were largely extirpated, and c. 40% of the forest cover was destroyed.

Whether or not this was an environmental disaster depends on the point of view taken. The ecosystems of the archipelago underwent prolonged adjustment, in some respects profound, to the novel influences of mammals, humans and fire. While the brief hunting phase rapidly eliminated large terrestrial birds, it is clear that giant, slow-breeding, naïve animals such as the moa could never have sustained harvesting under any conceivable management regime. Clearance of the forest eliminated some potential food sources, but it was more than compensated for in cleared land by increased production of bracken roots and other wild carbohydrate sources, and use of wetland birds and fish. Ultimately, pre-European contact Maori populations thrived and continued to grow by adapting tropical landscape management techniques to this new temperate world.

There has been a tendency to see in the environmental history of Polynesian impacts on the Pacific Islands, morality tales in microcosm about the broader relationship of humans to the globe. This moralising tendency is both anachronistic and unhelpful. The only choice during the settlement of the Pacific was whether to settle or not. The inevitable environmental consequences that followed were those that had repeatedly occurred throughout the world and were as beneficial to humans as they were damaging to the original biota. We see them more clearly in the Pacific, only because we are closer to them in time.

Date received: July 18, 2002