Restoring New Zealand
Mendocino Native Wyatt Dooley Pursues Ecological Restoration on the Other Side of the Globe
by Holly Madrigal
There was a confluence of factors that led Mendocino native-son, Wyatt Dooley, to be living and working across the globe. “I studied environmental science at U.C. Santa Barbara, and a lot of my classes were based on the Channel Islands National Park. There is a ton of biodiversity there—they call it the Galapagos of the Northern Hemisphere. A lot of environmental degradation happened there over the years, and when the park service began working on ecological restoration, they hired a lot of New Zealanders to come over and do the work. That country has a lot of experts, specifically in the area of island restoration, whom I met while working there.”
Onetangi beach, Waiheke Island
Wyatt and I, in true modern fashion, are talking via Zoom across space and time. He describes the factors that brought him to Waiheke Island just off Auckland. “New Zealand has amazing surf, and I travel all over the world for that,” he laughs. “And conveniently, New Zealand used to be one of the easiest places an American could get a one-year working holiday. It was super easy because they have a huge wine industry and other farm work that allows a back-packing culture to provide a young labor pool.”
Wyatt met his girlfriend, Ruth, while on a surf trip in Nicaragua, then connected with her again while visiting her native New Zealand. He traveled back and forth to the States, working as an environmental consultant in Mendocino. All these factors wove together, with the result that he found himself flying down for a visit in December of 2019, luckily just missing the cut off when New Zealand decided to close its borders due to the pandemic.
Wyatt’s background in environmental restoration led him to seek work in that field. He lives with Ruth near white sand beaches and vineyards and commutes to the city each day. “It’s crazy. I can take a 35-minute ferry ride to the mainland and arrive at a city. It’s like a commute from a place like Mendocino to San Francisco with a 35-minute ferry ride … I think the job I have is the most interesting job in the world,” continues Wyatt. “I work for an Iwi (a Maori word similar to a tribe) called Ngāti Whātua Orākei, and there are just the most incredible opportunities and projects that we are working on.”
Like many places around the world, New Zealand was colonized by the British and Europeans, with many years of oppression and the theft of native of lands. The Ngāti Whātua’s ancestral lands, called Tāmaki Makaurau Te Ika-a-Māui, were essentially the area that is now Auckland. As with many indigenous cultures, there was no such thing as land ownership. But when the Europeans came, the iwi designated three thousand acres as a gift, which the Europeans promptly “sold” for millions of dollars, starting a process of dispossession. In the 1970s and 1980s, the government wanted to claim the last remaining bluff property to build high-end housing, and the Ngāti Whātua protested by occupying the land until the government relented. They were able to keep the land undeveloped, and for the past 20 years they have been been restoring the forest and opened it as a park for the public. They have an ethical code called mātāpono (values), one of which is kaitiakitanga, meaning guardianship of the earth. One of the guiding factors of the Ngāti Whātua Orākei is to restore and caretake the land. In 2018 they were given another section of land through treaty settlement, a hundred acres near downtown Auckland.
The iwi crafted a visual framework of their goals and engaged the kids and elders of the community to find out what they would like to see on this land. Wyatt explains, “The children, for example, wanted to see a summer camp on this property, so we’re helping design an educational wilderness camp. Others wanted hiking trails. One of the plans is to plant certain tree species that are used for carving Pou (similar to totem poles) and ngawaka (canoes), planting these trees now so that their descendants can harvest in a hundred or more years.”
“I work with Ngāti Whātua to help achieve these visions,” Wyatt elaborates. “One of the first projects was the native plant nursery, which is when I started in 2020. Our goal is to grow half a million plants a year, much of which will be planted on the property to restore the forest health, since many invasive plants have taken over.” Wyatt is amazed by how the organization works. “When the pandemic started, they immediately asked their members what they needed. They put together care packages with food and items, and each iwi member received one. They called every single person to make sure they were ok. What they found was that getting fresh food was an issue.”
This jump-started a whole new project called the Maara kai (vegetable garden). The Maori are historically amazing gardeners, and this area had been previously cultivated as a produce garden. They are restoring the historical use as a food garden and also providing educational opportunities to members that want to learn more. Wyatt helped to develop this garden and now it is providing weekly fresh produce bags. Anyone within the iwi can come pick up produce grown right outside their door.
greens from the garden
The vision of the Ngāti Whātua already held these values, but the pandemic boosted the efforts. “We started in August, and it was like, we gotta make this happen. And by October we were building garden beds, by November we were harvesting greens, and now we have harvested about 1500 kilos of produce and have given it all out for free to the local community.” He continues, “The foundation of my work is that it is all educational. It’s learning how to garden, or learning about your history, or doing research on native plants. They want it to become a destination where you can come and learn and thrive.” The fact that this property is so close to the city center makes it very accessible.
“I just did a presentation for 75 school teachers, bringing them to the site to show them what is happening on Ngāti Whātua. This was closed off in the past, but now it is a Maori-led project inviting the world to come and learn about all the projects that are happening, and figuring out how we can get students in here to experience this. We have two universities conducting research experiments here. You can come learn about drought tolerant native species of plants, for example.”
Wyatt describes New Zealand as similar to many other places in the world. As they became more capitalist-focused, its history was filled with extraction of resources, timber, mining, agriculture, dairy, and sheep. “Like Mendocino County, it started off as a timber industry, but the resources were extracted. Here in New Zealand, it is this crazy dense forest with incredibly high diversity. There are many specific species that are found nowhere else on the planet. The land was cleared for agriculture and other uses, but they started to lose their biodiversity—for instance, the Kiwi, which is now a threatened species. This country really stepped up to become experts in ecological restoration. Now so much of the economy is based on its beauty and natural resources.”
It is the coolest thing to be part of this work with the Ngāti Whātua. “It’s a living lab, a research center, and I get to be part of it.“ Wyatt is the only American on the team, and he laughs that it is weird hearing an American accent as we talk. “I am learning so much about strategic planning for generations. It is such a great thing to be a part of, learning that the quickest way to a goal is not always the best. For example, we have an invasive plant, privet, that just takes over. But rather than use chemicals to kill it, the Ngāti Whātua and most iwi believe that everything has Mauri, life-force to it. Everything has a family tree, and by using chemicals you are killing that lifeforce. You can’t kill the energy, even of this invasive species. When pondering this problem, they decided to cut and mulch the privet and inoculate them with edible mushrooms, introducing three native species of mushrooms to be a food source. “It does work, but we are continuing to trial it on a small scale. They are really trying to find unconventional solutions to these problems.”
Wyatt says he looks forward to coming back to Mendocino to visit and see family once the travel restrictions are lifted, but as it goes, he stays in touch with family and friends remotely. And he still has plenty of time to surf. He counts himself fortunate to be part of this meaningful work on the other side of the globe, supporting the Ngāti Whātua in realizing their vision of an intact ecosystem that educates as much as it nourishes.
Find out more at ngatiwhatuaorakei.com.
Holly Madrigal is a Mendocino County maven who loves to share the delights of our region. She’s fortunate to enjoy her meaningful work as the director of the Leadership Mendocino program and takes great joy in publishing this magazine.
