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Galapagos to Maketū
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From Galapagos to Maketū
Julian Fitter was a founding member of Maketū Ōngātoro Wetland Society (MOWS), and last year, after 14 years, stepped down as their Chair. Clare Power met with him over coffee to talk about his life and his time with MOWS.
Julian Fitter has had, what can only be described as a fascinating and varied life thus far. Born and raised in England, his interests are in biology, geography, and economics. His parents were leading conservationists and both wrote - his mother a journalist his father a naturalist and writer.
Julian left England in 1964 to sail to Galapagos as a crew member on the Charles Darwin Foundation ship SV. Beagle. In 1965 he married Mary Angermeyer, whose father Carl had emigrated to Galapagos from Germany in 1935. He stayed for four years before returning to England to buy a 46ft Bermudan rigged cutter, with the idea of setting up a tourism business in Galapagos. A year later he sailed it back to Galapagos with his young family onboard, and over the years the business grew, and one yacht became four. He sold his business in the late seventies and the family returned to England. The initial intent had been to set up a tourism venture in the Falkland Islands, but that failed – had it kept going he would have been caught up in the invasion of the islands by Argentina in 1982!
Julian then worked in finance, and in 1984 he developed an independent financial advice business called Julian Fitter Associates, which in time became part of Savoy Financial Planning Plc. He remained with the company until 2004.
In 1979 he helped set up a UK charity, Falklands Conservation and was a founder trustee. Four decades on, he is still a member, currently one of the Vice Presidents—a role he shares with Sir David Attenborough!
He is also an Ambassador for the Galapagos Conservation Trust and was instrumental in its development in 1997. Once founded he held the role of Chair. There is so much more to say about Julian’s life so far, and it is well worth visiting his website .
I would describe Julian as part entrepreneur, part conservationist. This, combined with decades of life experience, unstoppable energy, and his vision for conservation work in New Zealand has had a positive impact in the Bay of Plenty.
HOW DID JULIAN END UP IN NEW ZEALAND?
In the 70s while living in Galapagos, his Belgian neighbours had a daughter who worked as a guide on one of his tourist boats. Her name was Tui De Roy. Over the years that followed they kept in touch as she travelled the world working as a wildlife photographer. In the early 2000’s he travelled to New Zealand and joined her and Mark Jones, and together they researched and wrote the book, Albatross: Their World, Their Ways. (Bateman 2008)
During this time Tui’s publishing agent at Batemans approached him to see if he was interested in writing a guide to New Zealand’s wildlife, similar to the book he had already published with Harper Collins in 2000 called Wildlife of the Galapagos. He agreed, and in doing so he visited many wild places on the mainland, as well as offshore islands such as the Antipodes and the Chatham’s. The book, A Field Guide to Wild New Zealand, was published in 2002 followed by Birds of New Zealand (Harper Collins 2011) and Julian, having seen more of the country than most residents, was very keen to stay.
“Galapagos Islands are well noted for their high levels of endemicity - as in species that are only found in the Galapagos,” Julian explains. “Think of marine iguanas, Darwin’s finches and the like. So, there is an instant link to New Zealand, except that New Zealand has a higher percentage of endemic species than Galapagos.”
“Something like 80% of our native species are endemic to New Zealand,” he continues. “And that’s across the whole range from fungi to insects to birds. We have virtually no land mammals anywhere apart from some bats, which actually prefer to feed on the ground!”
Julian spent the next few years visiting New Zealand, travelling extensively as he wrote and got, what he described as, “a very good handle on the place”.
UK TO MAKETŪ
By 2007 Julian was in New Zealand, having settled in Wellington with his artist friend Jayne Ivimey. After about a year they decided that warmer climes would suit them better and Jayne wanted a less European’ environment! After returning from a road trip around the North Island, they saw a house for rent in a place called Maketū. Unsure where this was, they looked it up and realised they had stopped there for a brownie and coffee and thought it was lovely at the time. They contacted the owner, Bay of Plenty photographer Andy Belcher, and after a quick trip back up the island they signed up and moved in January 2008.
DOTTEREL AND STOLEN PIGTAILS
“My move into conservation has been a slow journey,” explains Julian. “I’ve been involved for a long time, but more on the governance side of things, with the Galapagos Conservation Trust and Falklands Conservation.
Not long after we moved to Maketū, we heard there was to be a local meeting where a guy from Matata would talk about the New Zealand dotterel that nest on the beaches. After the talk everybody agreed that we needed to do something about protecting the dotterel on the spit. So, a fence was erected around the area using pigtail standards, and almost immediately somebody stole the pigtails!” Thankfully this did not put the locals off.
MOWS – 2009-2023 A BRIEF OVERVIEW
By 2009 an informal group, MOWG, was established to protect the thirty-five hectares of dunes at Maketū Spit, and local, Maureen Burgess, was the chair, secretary and treasurer.
“Maureen said that this was too much for one person, so I offered to help and became Chair,” explains Julian.
MOWS has grown considerably since then. In 2010 MOWS signed a Biodiversity Management Plan (BMP) with BOP Regional Council to look after Maketū Spit, then in 2011 they became a society as they needed to be a legal entity to handle funds. In 2013 they signed another BMP for Dotterel Point in Pukehina and then a third, Newdicks Beach in 2014 and a fourth in 2015 with the Waihi Harbour WMR – a 45ha DOC Reserve. Their fifth BMP was initially a Maketū Taiapure project, on the Kaituna River, started by their new Chair, Peter Ellery.
Over time they developed a team of highly skilled and qualified staff. Initially none of them had the skills, but they learnt them and taught others along the way. The key skills needed were pest and weed control, but additionally, they had to develop skills in ecological monitoring, planting, infrastructure, fencing and site maintenance. More recently they have been able to contract their services outside the MOWS area to help fund the unfunded running costs.
In 2015 they established an education programme based around teaching children to value and care for the natural environment — be it forest, wetlands or coastal — and they now take this programme to most of the schools in the area.
A lot has happened in a short space of time! For more a more detailed history go to maketuwetlands.org.nz
THE IMPORTANCE OF ADAPTING TO CHANGE
So why has he stepped down as chair for MOWS after 14 successful years?
“I have a sort of unwritten 10-year rule,” says Julian. “Life is about adapting to change. Darwin said that it’s not the strongest or the smartest that survive, it’s those that can adapt to change. One of the few things I remember from school is having a teacher visiting from Eton say to us that one of the most challenging things in life can be managing change. Things change whether you like it or not. I guess my role has changed somewhat, from being very hands-on and doing a lot of the work, to gradually becoming more managerial, a. And now I’m stepping back to allow them to get on with it. I’m still involved in two or three things because we’re in the process of acquiring a wetland. And after 10 years doing a particular thing, it’s not a bad time to pass it over.”
Although Julian planned to exit after 10 years it took another four to set things in place before he was able to step down.
I wanted to know what Julian believed to be the underlying reasons MOWS had experienced such growth in a relatively short amount of time.
PLAN IN DETAIL BEFORE YOU ‘DO’!
When they started, BOPRC’s Coast Care looked after dunes along the coast in the Bay of Plenty. The guy on the ground was Pim De Monchy and after seeing the work being done by MOWS on the Spit, he suggested to Julian they should make a BMP. (Biodiversity Management Plan - now called an Environmental Plan.) That would provide secure funding over a five-year period, giving certainty over what they could achieve. In 2010 Julian sat down with Pim for a few hours and at the end of it they had a BMP for Maketū Spit. Many BMP’s concentrate on managing specific aspects of the environment in an area, but the MOWS plan was very comprehensive, and funding from regional and district councils and DOC was approved.
“We knew what we were doing, when we were doing it and how we were paying for it, and that was really good.” Julian says.
As MOWS took on new areas, individual BMPs were developed. This detailed planning and funding has been a significant factor in their achievements so far.
To be successful in conservation the planning needs to happen before the funding. How can you know what you need when you don’t know exactly what you will be doing? This seems logical but is not always the case. Far too often funding is released based solely on an idea, and projects can fail due to money being spent without having a long-term sustainable plan in place. This makes it easier to obtain funding from multiple funders, rather than just one major donor. Work in conservation should result in economic value to the community. One of MOWS’s strengths is that they have grown gradually over the years and have a good reputation for getting results.
“We really wanted to bring the benefits of the conservation work into the community to show that conservation is also good for the local economy. Initially we paid local contractors to do some of the work, but soon decided that if we could train and do the work ourselves, then there would be greater benefit to the community. This this is one of the key things that we wanted to do.” Julian says.
Clearing wilding pines is a relatively expensive activity, with outside contractors charging around $115 per hour. In the early days of the Spit’s BMP Julian contacted Pim with a proposition: “We’ve got quite a lot of money specifically set aside for getting rid of the wilding pines. Rather than spending all this money on outside contractors, why don’t we get the training and do the work ourselves?”
Pim and the other funders agreed. Julian believes that relying on volunteers to get large amounts, of sometimes specialised work done, is both impractical for long term planning and it’s unfair to expect them to regularly turn up and work hard for nothing. Volunteers help, but they tend to come and go and are often only available at weekends. He says that there’s just not the numbers that are needed to do the work, especially in smaller communities and some work requires skills that they just don’t have. Initially they just contracted some of their members on a casual basis, but then in 2020 they decided to take the plunge and become an employer, giving employees full employment benefits. He says that this is fairer for their workers and of greater benefit to the community.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT UNTIL YOU ALMOST LOSE IT
The national response to the *Rena disaster in 2011 was hard to witness. There was a lack of appreciation and understanding at all levels of local and national government. There was a particular lack of appreciation as to the urgency of the situation. Once the oil leaked there was even more confusion Eventually the local community. both in Pāpāmoa - which was hardest hit - and Maketū took over, and with the support of BOP Regional Council they did a pretty good job. Official advice to locals from various authorities was stay away and leave the clean-up to the specialists, but we actually had no specialists.
This community action showed the love locals felt for the area, and their combined grief demonstrated just how important our natural environment is to us as humans.
Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got, until it is almost taken from you.
THINK SMARTER!
One silver lining from Rena was that funding became available through compensation paid by the shipping company to help with the costs of the clean-up. MOWS was able to get enough funding to purchase their very own side-by-side utility vehicle. This made a massive difference, because up until this time Julian had to drive to and from Mount Maunganui to borrow a Council vehicle, which took precious hours, (and gas money), that could have been better spent in the field. Access to the right equipment such as diggers and side-by-sides save many days of manual labour.
Julian says that a big hindrance to working a new area can be lack of access. “There is no point spending half your time battling to get to a place; people need to be able to get into an area and get the job done. One of the first things to consider when planning a new project is how accessible it is. If there is no easy way in, then the first job on the list should be building suitable tracks for long-term usage.”
However, sometimes you need to prevent vehicle access. To stop dunes eroding and allow vegetation – either planted or naturally regenerating – to thrive, vehicle access needs to be restricted. MOWS struggled in the early days with finding methods of fencing that worked. Various attempts failed due to vandalism, theft, or nature. Julian came up with a plan which has proved successful.
He went on to explain the method, “In Maketū we used 1.8, tree stakes with electric fencing tape to form a temporary fence which we remove at the end of each breeding season, and that has worked extremely well. At Dotterel Point in Pukehina, where there was a vehicle problem, we used large 1.8m fence posts, set deep in the sand using an auger, and joined by a strong 20mmn rope that ties it all together. We call this a semi-permanent fence, as each year some posts get washed out - but not away - and we are able to reposition them according to the new shape of the spit. In 2022 around forty posts were washed out along the ocean side, but we were able to reposition them once the sea and the estuary had decided what they were going to do!”
THINK ONE HUNDRED YEARS PLUS
Julian believes that to succeed in restoring the many ecosystems in New Zealand we need to be planning long term – like one hundred years or more. He believes that the planning should involve all parties and that we need to work with our neighbours, those in the local district and beyond. Bouncing from one elected government to another, with its funding inconsistencies and continual changes in policy, whilst in isolated conservation groups is not the best use of our time and resources. He believes work in conservation can become self-sustaining and have huge economic impact to the nation.
“In 2013 I realised we [conservation groups] just can’t keep working in isolation and that we had to start thinking bigger,” Julian explains.
Having realised that setting up a National Organisation was a non-starter, he started working on the concept of getting the different conservation groups in the region together and working more collaboratively to strengthen their efforts.
To take pressure off groups he wanted to set up an organisation that offered support where needed, either in the field or in the office: conservation education, getting groups access to new technology in mapping and record keeping, helping them with planning and funding and much more. The result of this work was Bay Conservation Alliance which was founded in 2017 and Julian sits as its Chair. MOWS really paved the way to setting up BCA, which in itself has been extremely successful, however he believes it is not the answer to all our environmental problems.
“Just look at the potential issues that have been raised by the new coalition government,” he says. “There is a lot more work to do. The biggest one is educating the people of Aotearoa New Zealand to really appreciate, understand and value their unique environment.”
His vision is to get representatives from all parts of society sitting down at one table to openly discuss common issues with our environment and work towards solving them in ways that will benefit all. He is a man who does not let fear of failure stand in his way of fully living. Some may think he’s a dreamer, but I would disagree.
When I asked Julian if he had any final words of wisdom he said, “I’m not into words of wisdom as such, but I think the most important thing is to be adaptable, flexible, able to change what we do. One problem will be resolved but new problems will come up, because things don’t stay the same.”
Julian Fitter is a person of action, an outside-the-square, solutions-orientated thinker, and I look forward to watching his journey in conservation continue. After spending time with him, I came away inspired and hopeful.
