The preface by ‘Moko’, was my alter ego to design and compile the book when I was the Biodiversity Advisor for a district council in the South Island of New Zealand. The full colour book is 250 pages long. Print copies are available through the Department of Conservation, NZ, or you can download a free (medium resolution 24Mb) digital copy.

The endpiece paints a less positive picture. Just before I completed the book, the council voted to end its biodiversity programme. Several of Moko’s friends are now closer to extinction.

Preface

Hi everyone,

My name is Moko. My friends and I live in habitats scattered across the Hurunui District and beyond to our neighbouring Tasman, Buller, Grey, Marlborough, Kaikoura, Selwyn, and Waimakariri Districts. Some of my friends spend only part of their lives in New Zealand, travelling as far away as Antarctica, Australia, Tonga, the North Pacific ocean, and South America to spend winter or to breed. With your help, there will always be a safe home for them here every time they return.

This book is filled with pages created by children to celebrate biodiversity in the Hurunui District. The book begins with an overview of biodiversity and this district. Subsequent chapters are about living organisms grouped according to their evolutionary complexity rather than by kingdom or phylum. The last chapter is about conservation areas and projects that are helping to protect us and restore our habitats.

The children who contributed to this book were aged between 5 and 18. They designed A4 brochures that could be folded into 6 pages, and opened out to 2 pages as you see them in the book. The children researched, discovered, and wrote about topics that interested them, or were important to them. Several drew or painted pictures, others wrote stories. While some of the details may be incomplete or imperfect, this book is a work of hope and love by the children who contributed.

We, and the children, know that my friends and I need all the help we can get, for many of us are very rare.

Some of us are on the verge of extinction.

We also know that there are lots of people not included in this book who have and continue to work very hard to help protect us and restore our homes.

This is our way of thanking all of you.

Signed, Moko.

A final word from the editor

Long ago, when Zealandia (see Chapter 6) was submerged beneath the ocean, biodiversity in the Hurunui District looked very different from today. So Moko decided it was fitting to end this book with a poignant reminder of an era when vast and ancient creatures ruled our planet.

To walk along the Waipara River today is to journey back in time almost 300 million years. Here, marine reptiles the size of dragons lay cocooned inside enormous geological pearls, giant fossilized oysters and clams pave sections of the riverbed, and the bones of extinct birds protrude from the rocks and sediment lining the banks. In a very special place, one of only a few locations in the world, you can see the KPg boundary, evidence of the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This triggered the fifth mass extinction on Earth that ended one geological era and heralded in another.

Today, we stand at the dawn of a new geological era, the Anthropocene, so named because we humans are responsible for the sixth mass extinction now underway. Yet because this is our time, unlike the dinosaurs, we have the ability to choose the fate of all living creatures that share our remarkable world. And we should never forget that our destiny is inexorably linked with theirs.

So let’s choose wisely.

– Sonny Whitelaw, Biodiversity Advisor Hurunui District Council, July 2013-October 2014