Eco-warrior ramps up her battle
Assignment on tiny atoll means a major digital detox for green crusader
Teenage Kiwi eco-crusader Charlie Thomas will spend most of the year on one of the world’s most remote coral atolls helping threatened sea birds and doing a major digital detox at the same time.
She’s heading for Kure, the northernmost atoll in the Hawaiian chain of islands. It’s a ring of coral surrounding 86ha of land, occupied only by thousands of birds, monk seals and four humans on rotation for eight months.
The two field camp managers from Hawaii and another volunteer from Texas will be dropped off by a research ship on the atoll.
They must take brand new clothes, which are frozen to kill bugs and no fresh food. What they eat can only be tinned or frozen.
There’s only solar power, no internet — just limited access to a satellite phone for emergencies or checking occasionally with families.
The remote team will clear the speck of land of invasive weeds, monitoring the birds and cleaning up the mountains of plastic waste that washes up.
Thomas finished at Albany’s Pinehurst School in 2018 and has just spent a year spreading the ocean clean-up message around schools in New Zealand through her role in the Sea Cleaners.
The group’s leader Hayden Smith says he sees parallels between her and environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is just a year younger.
Smith says both are absolutely committed to their causes, passionate and expert at articulating their views. She’s also media savvy — her mother is broadcaster Jeanette Thomas, longtime host of TV3’s consumer show Target.
Thomas laughs off the comparison with Thunberg but says the Swedish teen is one of her idols.
“I wouldn’t say that — I know of so many people who are doing amazing things and have the same beliefs that I have (but) I think she’s awesome,” Thomas said.
“She talks about stuff that needs to be talked about and anybody that says otherwise is just jealous I think.”
While Thunberg has become a little gloomy about the planet’s future, Thomas is an optimist.
“There’s no point in not being positive and losing hope because that means we give up and then there’s no hope of making a difference.”
The Sea Cleaners group picks up five container loads of rubbish a month from New Zealand’s northern coasts and with the support of Hawaii Tourism Oceania and Hawaiian Airlines sent eight ambassadors to Oahu in 2018. The two businesses again are supporting Thomas to get to her Kure posting this year.
As for the big digital detox on Kure, Thomas is looking forward to it.
In the past she has spent about two hours a day on social media but that interest has already been waning as what she was seeing on her feeds was becoming increasingly negative news and was overwhelming.
“I’m quite excited about having nothing,” she said.
There’s no point in not being positive and losing hope because that means we give up. Charlie Thomas