Keeping us green, keeping us honest
Lord of the Rings tour guide Bruce Hopkins is sure to get a whole bucketload of cow manure tipped over his head today. That’s what happens to those who are brave enough to challenge New Zealand’s international tourism claims to be clean and green
We don’t like it. Just ask Dr Mike Joy. When the Massey University freshwater ecologist told the New York Times that New Zealand’s ‘‘picture perfect’’ 100% Pure brand was a fiction, he was slammed as a ‘‘traitor’’. John Key accused him of living in a different world from other New Zealanders; a world where the economy ground to a halt to keep the environmentalists happy.
That coincided with the red carpet launch of the first Hobbit film. Now Hopkins has raised his head above the same parapet to face the slings and arrows of wounded national pride.
As an actor playing Gamling in the Rings, he fought at the Battle of the Hornburg and defended the gates of the Glittering Caves.
As a Middle-earth tour guide he defends New Zealand’s reputation to big-spending visitors shocked to discover the country isn’t as clean as the 100% Pure marketing campaign had led them to expect.
Hopkins is particularly concerned about the damage he sees done to our ‘‘sewer pipe’’ waterways by dairy faming.
Tourism NZ rejects that: its says ‘‘100% Pure’’ is about the people, landscape and activities, not about the environment.
With respect, that anonymous spin is, again, cow manure. Tourists come from around the world believing our claim to purity, the stunning photos of lakes and fiords a promise of cleanliness.
Even the former Tourism Board boss George Hickton, when he launched the brand back in 1999, told the Sunday Star-Times it was about playing to our strengths: New Zealand’s clean, green image, concentrating on its scenery and outdoor pursuits.
New Zealand is not as clean as the image we sell to the world – we know it. The green and dewy meadows of Middle-earth were formed by the destruction of our native forests to make way for heavily-fertilised dairy paddocks. All that glitters is not green.
But it’s not just farmers who must take responsibility for the damage; we all must share in preserving this country. As we head off on our holidays, it’s as simple as cleaning up after ourselves; treading lightly on our fragile coastlines.
We too are heading off on a brief holiday. Next Sunday is Christmas Day, so we’ll take a break from publishing the Star-Times before returning with a bumper edition on New Year’s Day.
Happy Christmas to all our readers – and to your children, and their children too. Let’s make sure we keep New Zealand as beautiful for them as it it for us today.