Sam Gibson, AKA Sam the Trap Man, is intent on protecting our bush and its native species.
Sam Gibson is the new breed of New Zealand bushman - charismatic, photogenic, equally comfortable in front of a cellphone camera or behind a rifle - and he will change the way you think about the bush.
His social media channels, under the name “Sam The Trap Man”, already have tens of thousands of followers, and now his first book, Sam the Trap Man: Cracking Yarns and Tall Tales from the Bush, has been published by one of the country’s biggest publishers, Allen & Unwin. In short, he’s the biggest thing in the New Zealand bush.
Unlike New Zealand’s most famous literary bushman, the famously abrasive and self-absorbed Barry Crump, Gibson is warm and likeable, a family man, and he’s devoting his life to helping protect our bush and its native species.
He’s far from your typical social media influencer: He was still using an old push-button Nokia long after everyone else was using smartphones. He started his social channels in part because his wife told him to. “She said, ‘You need to start telling your stories online and start letting the next generation know all the exciting, unique ecosystem stuff that you’re yarning with me about’.”
He has built up his social media following mostly through quiet videos full of insights into the bush and the surprising ways in which everything in it, including us, depends on everything else.
But at least part of his appeal comes down to the fact that he doesn’t seem to be trying to “build up a following”. He’s more like an anti-influencer. One recent video consists entirely of a close up of his smiling face as he listens to the song of the tīeke. “I just love being in the bush around tīeke,” he says to his camera. “Nothing quite beats it.”
Many of his videos are about plants: In one, he shows how kareao or bush asparagus can be eaten raw or cooked, provides a drink when there’s no fresh water around, and can be squeezed into cuts to stop bleeding. In another, he shows how patē or seven-finger can be used to relieve skin irritations and diseases such as ringworm and eczema, how its leaves can be used to call birds and how its hollow stem can be used to inflate kelp bags that can be used to carry the forest’s bounty.
Elsewhere, he discusses how to identify a tawaka mushroom, how to use the red sap of rimu to help heal large wounds and why forest vines are so important. If these videos don’t sound especially interesting, that’s only because you haven’t watched them and become caught up in his infectious enthusiasm.
Sometimes he shares personal stories, often involving his two preschool-aged children. In one, he and his son visit an uncle who’s living in a shelter in the bush trapping possums. Gibson narrates the video as if he’s reading aloud from a children’s book: “He was a little bit upset the weka had stolen his favourite fork, but it was okay because he had a spare.”
Four years ago, Gibson co-founded a project called Eastern Whio Link to save the endangered native whio or blue duck, which was experiencing catastrophic population decline. From a base of four breeding pairs in the lower North Island, the group have fledged over a hundred chicks in four years.
He says: “That’s just a little bit of trapping and getting your mates together for the odd weekend. It’s totally reversed that population of whio.”
This is his big message - that it doesn’t take a lot of effort to make a big difference.
He believes having people in the bush is both good for the bush and for people. Without people working in the bush to mitigate the impact of introduced species, he says, we will face “crippling biodiversity loss”.
“If our people aren’t connected to their ecosystems in a real way, in a daily way, in a weekly way, then our people tend to care less about our ecosystems. And if we’re not connected and working with our ecosystems and we care less about them, then we don’t tend to look after them.”
While his social channels provide people with a virtual connection to our ecosystems, he’s also helping them connect physically by taking city dwellers and non-outdoorsy types out from behind their desks and into nature.
“I think that typically when we’re in the bush, we slow down a bit ... what we tend to notice is people slow down, they relax, they come, they eat good food, they drink good water, they come into balance with themselves and they walk away feeling refreshed, which I think is exactly what I’ve noticed in my life.”
While it is possible to do good work for the natural world from an office, he says, people typically don’t. It’s only when they get out in nature that they tend to notice things, to develop context and depth of knowledge, which makes it easier for them to make good decisions about how to manage their impacts.
“We show them the kai, all the ways the bush is trying to be generous to us with kai. We show them what food we can eat. There’s pikopiko, and there’s mushrooms and there’s all these different fruits. The bush is constantly trying to give us things. And by bringing those folks out into the bush and showing them the ways in which the bush is generous to us, they can’t help but want to protect that place.”
His book is full of stories about the generosity of the bush and how it has provided for him and his family. He hopes it will continue to provide for all of us for years to come. And while he understands the extent and the severity of the threats it faces from both humans and introduced species, he is relentlessly positive about the future.
“I’m not very good at dwelling on negative things,” he says. “I guess the way I cope with that is by taking action. All I can hope is that the small actions we can achieve will help fix the problem.”
Sam The Trap Man: Cracking Yarns and Tall Tales from the Bush by Sam Gibson, published by Allen & Unwin, is available from August 13.
Landscape architect Brittany Smith took out the senior title.