CURRENT LAND-USE
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Fragmented Landscapes
native forest
Once a rich landscape, with multiple layers of cultural and ecological meaning which have condensed as history as transpired, Waiwiri is now strangely static amongst the surrounding farm lands. The isolation
indigenous forest
forced upon it by the draining and felling of surrounding ecosystems has left Lake Waiwiri without its essential web of systems and mauri (the life principle or essence of a place/character)84. This piece of bush has become an island, isolated between farmland and market gardens.85 Influenced by European concepts of history and preservation, it sits
high producing farmland
scrub
fenced and protected but not truly growing nor evolving, only standing as a reminder to what was there before. As demonstrated by comparing Figures 70 & 71 the natural layout of
indigenous broadleaved hardwood
the vegetation types has been drastically changed by pasture and market gardens. Figure 61 especially demonstrates the fragmented nature of these remaining native landscapes; the pasture and farm land are overbearing in their large blocks of area.
gorse and broom
orchards
Geoff Park argues that with domestication, the native living memory of a place dies.86 Such is the case at Lake Waiwiri. All around the lake there is a history of removal. There are only flat lands, pastures and
low producing farmland
wetlands 84 Ryan, P. M. (Ed.) (2008) ‘The Raupō Dictionary of Modern Māori’. Auckland: Penguin Group. 174. 85 Department of Conservation, ‘Wellington Conservation Management Strategy. Part Two: Places in Wellington Conservancy. Chapter 7, Kapiti and Horowhenua’. 90. 86 Park, G. (1995). ‘Ngā Uruora: The Groves of Life. Ecology and History in the New Zealand Landscape’. Wellington: Victoria University Press. 81.
sands
exotic forest