Changing times: The emerging environmental movement of the 1960s spurred dramatic changes in Forest & Bird

摘要

Manapouri is one of many beautiful Fiordland lakes but in the 1960s and early 70s its name became a rallying cry for conservation. The campaign to save the lake from being raised many metres for a hydro scheme - and wiping out its beech forest fringe- was the first of many salvos fired on the environmental front starting in the 1960s. "We had in New Zealand generally an emerging environmental conscience and it was experienced notably in the Manapouri debate," says Gordon Ell, Forest & Bird presidentfrom 1990-94.Forest & Bird members of the era were not known for their firebrand approach to protecting nature but they drew the line at allowing Manapouri's wilderness to be sacrificed to supply power for an aluminium smelter.