Jono's amazing time is over

It used to be said that immigrants to the Far North who had not left within nine years never would. Jonathan (Jono) Maxwell was pushing that boundary when he left his position as the Department of Conservation's area manager in Kaitaia last week, but it was time to go. And he would no doubt be taking a fair chunk of the Far North with him to his new job as area manager in Ruapehu.

He had arrived in Kaitaia a little over eight years ago, and it was time for new blood, he said on Friday afternoon, but his time in the Far North had been "pretty amazing". That view was shared by a number of speakers at a farewell the week before, the consensus being that Mr Maxwell had done an extremely good job of bringing iwi in particular and the department on to the same page.

The man himself said he regarded the progress made in terms of integrating DOC and iwi, and DOC and the wider community, as the major achievement of his tenure.

"A lot of my work has been in that field, striving for a balance between the law and lore," he said.

Conservation was one of a very few government departments that were legally bound to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi, he added, something he doubted many people appreciated, and he had worked hard as something of a middleman between iwi on one hand and the Government on the other.

If the challenges for a DOC manager in the Far North were verging on unique there was no doubt that that status was held by the district's conservation values, home to some of the highest conservation values in the country (such as Te Paki and Warawara). It was also home to more critically endangered native species "per square inch" than anywhere else in the country.

Tangariro/National Park would offer new challenges (apart from exchanging whale strandings for volcanic eruptions and droughts for snowstorms).

"Here the conservation work and the environments that need protection are like a mosaic; (DOC) has hundreds of neighbours in the Far North. National Park is one unit, but it won't be entirely new. "The iwi there are looking to reconnect with their mountain in a meaningful way, and that's a process I'm looking forward to being part of," he said.

"The Far North has been a dynamic place to work though.

"As well as the emergencies, the fires and whale strandings, there's been some cool ecological stuff," he said.

The relationship with the community had clearly been a mutually beneficial one. Mr Maxwell had never stayed as long in one place as he did in Kaitaia, although he had been needed elsewhere now and then, including time in Wellington, where he had been part of a restructuring process, and to contribute his skills to larger-scale emergency responses, such as the sinking of the Rena off Tauranga and the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch.

And he had no doubt that the strengthened relationship between iwi and DOC in the Far North would continue to prosper.

"DOC and iwi have a lot of synergyisms," he said, "although ideally DOC should be taking a back seat role."

Mr Maxwell's successor is Doug Te Wake, who joined DOC in Kaitaia in 1990 and returned, at Mr Maxwell's behest, after four years spent culling goats in the Bay of Islands.

"He picked his team when he came here, and I was one of the people he wanted," Mr Te Wake said.

"I'm gutted that he's leaving," he added.

"He's been a really good manager, and he's been good for Kaitaia. We are really going to miss him."