Gift of swamp kauri bowl to Biden called appalling mistake
Sharp debate stirred by game fishing support
A Coromandel school that rejected a $2500 scholarship tied to a game fishing tournament says it made the decision in order to avoid embroiling students in controversy.
But that decision has turned into a public spat over the merits of the sport — and how much influence teachers with strong views should have when a school makes decisions.
The cash scholarship was to be awarded to the Mercury Bay Area School student who designed the best T-shirt logo for the Kubota Billfish Classic tournament, which is run by the Mercury Bay Game Fishing Club.
The money was intended to be spent on university or apprenticeship costs, with hopes of turning it into an annual scholarship.
But after initially supporting the idea, the school’s principal says he turned it down due to diverging views over game fishing.
The club posted to a local Facebook page earlier this month, calling that decision “cancel culture gone mad”.
In the post, tournament organiser Tom Maxwell said he and some school staff had worked very hard on the scholarship but it was “cancelled thanks to a few staff members that have protested due to their strong personal opinions condemning recreational fishing”.
Students could still pursue the scholarship directly through the club, but Maxwell encouraged people to tell the school if they were disappointed with its stance.
Singled out for criticism was Mercury Bay teacher Thomas Everth, a well-known environmental activist who runs the Coromandel Ocean Protection page.
The origins of a swamp kauri bowl gifted to United States President Joe Biden are causing controversy in Te Tai Tokerau — with one environmentalist calling the present an “appalling” mistake.
Mana whenua are also frustrated they were kept out of the loop.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave the bowl to Biden on her recent visit to Washington. Her office has confirmed the wood came from businessman Nelson Parker.
But the chair of the Northland Environmental Protection Society Fiona Furrell told RNZ that was a “faux pas”.
A Ministry for Primary Industries report provided to RNZ shows Parker was investigated in 2019.
It found he likely contravened the
He teaches part-time at the school, running a class on environmental sustainability while completing a PHD on the experience of climate activist teachers in New Zealand.
Everth confirmed to the Herald he opposed the scholarship for ethical reasons and had made his views known to the school.
Stressing that he was speaking in a personal capacity, Everth said he could not in good conscience endorse the competition to his pupils. He
Forests Act, exporting swamp kauri to China and calling it artwork. Products must be manufactured, not just raw wood. But the ministry decided not to prosecute because officials initially told Parker the kauri was compliant.
Furrell said the Prime Minister’s Office needed to do more “investigating” when buying gifts for worldfamous people and had shown “a lack of care”. “To use swamp kauri, of all things, for a gift to America, is really not on. It’s shocking after all the work we’ve gone through to try and protect these wetlands that produce the swamp kauri.”
The society took a fight to stop the export of raw swamp kauri logs all the way to the Supreme Court in 2018 and won.
The timber is milled from trees that have been buried and preserved in believed game fishing was akin to torture, comparing it to rodeo or big game hunting in Africa.
The school’s principal had requested input from teachers and Everth had responded to say he believed it was ethically questionable, he said.
Everth said he wasn’t personally opposed to the club or the existence of the scholarship — but as a teacher he would have difficulty with his own school endorsing the competition directly, or asking him as a teacher to promote it.
However, while he accepted that Everth had a right to his views, Maxwell didn’t believe the school should be bowing to them as it was impossible to keep everyone happy.
Mercury Bay school principal John Wright told the Herald it became clear there was a “significant divergency of view” on such matters, and he didn’t want students to get caught
up in it. peat swamps for between 800 and 60,000 years.
Extraction can damage ecosystems as well as historically and culturally important sites, although NIWA surveys suggest most swamp kauri now sits under farm paddocks.
“Any use of swamp kauri that is featured by our Government therefore puts our wetlands at risk, because people will want more swamp kauri now,” Furrell said.
She said the swamp kauri gift was an “appalling” mistake and “wasn’t moral” — and the President should reconsider his possession of the wood. Parker confirmed the wood came from farmland in the Kai Iwi Lakes area.
Te Roroa is mana whenua there. In a statement, the iwi’s development group general manager Snow Tane said: “Te Roroa had no knowledge that a bowl from our rohe had been gifted to the POTUS. The Prime Minister’s Office should have considered acknowledging mana whenua.”
He said Te Roroa had witnessed the “desecration” of swamplands for valuable timber. “These taonga have now moved beyond us, and a lot of people have made a lot of profit from them.”
The Prime Minister’s Office has not commented. But Parker, owner of Nelson’s Kaihu Kauri near Dargaville, said it was “rude” of people to criticise the gift and suggest it be returned.
Asked about the MPI probe in 2019 into his swamp kauri export that investigators concluded was in “contravention of the [Forests] Act”, Parker said they were wrong. “It was always an art form. It was never a log. And this is where it has been misconstrued.” —RNZ