Conservation comment: Science, nature and global warming

These exotic pines have invaded the hillside and will smother all native growth. Photo / Supplied

Nature, to a conservationist, is the only guide, the only force, system and world that we must live by.

Nature's mighty engine is evolution, which has created our vital world over four billion years. Nature has no "consciousness", so that every living thing evolves purely by being the most suitable (fittest) creation for its purpose.

Science is the academic study of nature by humans to ensure that we understand natural laws. Science was started by great men like Galileo, Bacon and Newton who wrestled it away from religious dictators (often at risk to their lives).

Each wonderful law of nature was stated, quantified and explained by these brilliant, brave men who "stood on the shoulders of giants" to give us science.

The early scientist Francis Bacon said 500 years ago: "We must never use nature against herself". Unfortunately, we humans have been doing just that, ever since!

Global warming, causing climate change, is the damage to our environment by humans mining natural stored fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to get heat. This is using nature against herself and scientists are screaming at us to "stop now"!

We have seen storms levelling hillsides, on TV, to flood vast areas of human habitat. We would do well to remember David Attenborough's statement in his book The Living Planet that if all the land and sea bed were levelled, it would be covered by several kilometres of seawater.

Here in New Zealand, I believe we humans have abused nature in other ways. Since our arrival a few thousand years ago we have completely ignored the wonderful world that nature had created.

Over 80 million years of evolution in isolation from the world, she created the wonderfully diverse trees and shrubs and animals that hold precious medical aids for future humans. We have brought in every predator and pest that we could think of from the rest of the world with complete disregard for these native species.

Early NZ governments completely ignored the pleas of scientists to preserve our wonderful kauri forests. The politicians of the day, however, decreed that a North American pine tree species would be our national forest tree of choice.

These species (mainly Pinus radiata) are inferior in every way to our own native conifers but grow much faster. They are now creating mass destruction of our native fauna with their ability to suck up all surrounding moisture and actually create fire hazard.

In many cases where native plants thrived, we have allowed wilding exotic pines to take over and establish 40m-high "black walls" to smother out all native plants.

Farmers are our "front-line scientific conservation managers" for every corner of our land in New Zealand. Our Government intends to cut down their stock numbers to reduce methane pollution and will not allow them to plant native trees on their land to retain their current stock levels or in return for methane/carbon gas credits.

This has the effect of taking farms away from kiwis and selling them to foreign speculators who can claim credits. We then have vast foreign-owned exotic pine forests that are toxic to our whole environment. This is surely another crime against nature and conservation.

• Rob Butcher is a retired engineer and conservationist