Catherine Knight has been honoured for her contribution to the environmental history of the Manawatū and surrounding areas.
Catherine Knight has been honoured for her contribution to the environmental history of the Manawatū and surrounding areas.
It might be New Zealand Environment Week, but the work of Manawatū woman Catherine Knight in documenting the region’s environmental history will span generations.
Knight, who was recognised for her contribution to the environmental history of the Manawatū and surrounding areas with a local historian of the year award last month, has published books that will serve as valuable historical references.
Knight came upon the field of New Zealand history after studying in Japan and then at Massey and Canterbury universities where she completed an MA on Japanese perceptions of the environment.
One of her first publications with a local focus was a 2008 article for the Manawatū Journal of History using Totara Reserve as a window into the Manawatū's environmental history.
Author and historian Catherine Knight. Photo / Charmead Schella
She remembers visiting Totora Reserve, a 340ha native forest, as a child and being taken aback by what she saw.
“I just remember being absolutely transfixed by the trees. I am still drawn to it ... it is the only significant example of lowland forest left in Manawatū,” she said.
She wrote other articles on associated topics, using the Manawatū as a key example of deforestation and the creation of a pastoral world through the use of fire.
“Humans have created climate change and have to respond and change our lifestyles as a result. There is always reaction and counter-reaction between humans and the environment,” she said.
“Growing up, looking at the environment as it was, it never occurred to me that it was anything other than it is now. But pretty much all the forest has gone in the lowlands. The rolling hills of pasture are a created landscape.”
Knight followed with book-length publications, most notably, in 2014, Ravaged Beauty: an environmental history of the Manawatū, the culmination of five years’ research.
Palmerston North Heritage Trust designated it the best book on the history of the Manawatū for 2013-14, and it went on to win the J.M. Sherrard award in regional and local history.
The book continues to be sought after here and overseas, resulting in several reprints.
Catherine Knight in 2020 after the release of her book Wildbore. Photo / Alexander Robertson
New Zealand’s Rivers: an Environmental History was published by Canterbury University Press in 2016. It was long-listed in the Ockham awards, and the New Zealand Listener included it among its best books of 2016.
Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics then came out in 2018, followed closely by Wildbore: a photographic legacy.
Full of captivating pictures, the book examined Charles Wildbore’s record of environmental change in the Manawatū, while also taking Knight into the field of biography.
An article Knight wrote in 2019 provided a historical overview of freshwater management, showing her increasing move into strategic and operational environmental policy.
Publications such as her 2020 book Nature and Wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand show how her thinking has become more future oriented, but is still heavily informed by a historical awareness.
Through blogs and an enviro-history website, and with radio interviews and public talks, she continues to shed light on the past and shape attitudes for the future.
Her awareness of the smal, self-contained communities of the past, for example, informs her arguments for the “urban village” contained within the modern city, and the need for “de-growth”.
Knight, who was born in Palmerston North, said it was an honour to have received the Palmerston North Heritage Trust 2024 Manawatū Local Historian of the Year award.
“That they have seen to reward me and my contribution in this way, to have that come from your peers, is very special,” she said.
