Progressive teacher, conservation crusader
Barbara Jean Mitcalfe, educator, conservationist: b November 25, 1928, Christchurch; m Barry Mitcalfe (diss), 4d, 1s, p Chris Horne; d January 7, 2017, Wellington, aged 88.
Barbara Mitcalfe spent much of her life studying and preserving the natural world. In doing so, she helped develop and protect scores of Wellington region’s natural habitats.
The bush and forests were the places she felt most at home and her field work as a conservationist helped in the preservation of many of our local parks and reserves.
‘‘Plants are great to study: they can’t run away and they don’t answer back. They have much to teach us, if we are open to it,’’ she once said.
‘‘Plants just do what they do. They just ARE. I’m sure there’s a lesson there.’’
Barbara Mitcalfe was born in Christchurch and raised in Wellington with her sister Marion. Educated at Mt Cook Primary School and Wellington East Girls’ College, she then studied at Victoria University, where she earned a BA in French and later went on to teachers’ college.
A life-long interest in and advocacy for te reo Maori began in Pukearuhe, Taranaki, where she was raising her young family in the 1950s with her then husband, the author and social and political activist Barry Mitcalfe.
After a spell at Te Aute College, the family moved to Ahipara, in the Far North, where in the early 1960s, she and other local mothers established the first Maori preschool.
When the family returned to Wellington later that decade she once again enrolled at Victoria University to study te reo when the language became available as a subject in 1974.
Around this time Mitcalfe began her career at Wellington Polytechnic teaching and coordinating a range of courses. Her work there spanned almost three decades. Her role was varied but included teaching a programme for women seeking to return to the workforce.
As an ahead-of-the-times educator in primary, tertiary and community sectors, she brought te reo Maori, tı¯kanga Maori and the environment to the fore of her students’ minds.
In 1981 she met Chris Horne on a Wellington Botanical Society expedition on the Red Hills, Mt Richmond Forest Park in Marlborough. Their common interest in nature created a bond that would last the rest of her life.
Together they advocated ceaselessly for the restoration of the Wellington region’s indigenous ecosystems.
Over the years, Mitcalfe became known for her expertise as a field botanist specialising in native plant ecology. She was president of the Wellington Botanical Society from 1989 to 1991, then vicepresident from 1992 to 1994.
She was also a member and driving force within numerous other conservation and environment groups. In 1989, she co-founded the Wellington Polytechnic Environment Group and was a foundation member of Karori Sanctuary, Zealandia.
She enjoyed hundreds of Wellington Botanical Society field trips in the city’s big green backyards.
With Horne she botanised numerous local bush areas, sharing their interest in native plants and indigenous ecosystems, and co-wrote many submissions on environmental topics to influence decision-makers.
The couple were contracted by local councils and the Department of Conservation to measure efficacy of possum control. This work saw them helicoptered deep into the Tararua Range where they would spend days documenting the vegetation.
On one occasion they got delayed and spent a chilly night in the Rimutaka Ranges. The following day they ‘bushwhacked’ their way out, arriving just as a search party was about to be dispatched.
Mitcalfe’s interest in nature compelled her to campaign on a political level for the betterment and conservation of Aotearoa’s bush and reserves.
She led difficult negotiations to save Te Marua Bush, Upper Hutt – a rare matai-totara-black maire terrace forest – from proposed State Highway 2 expansion in the 1980s, and she spearheaded Wellington Botanical Society’s liaison with Greater Wellington Regional Council to foster the continued restoration of this forest.
In her work with the society she advocated for the cessation of quarrying on Wellington’s south coast and appeared before the Environment Court, on behalf of the society, in the successful attempt to save Larsen Crescent Bush, Redwood, from clearance for subdivision.
A prolific writer, he contributed to many botanical publications, including Wellington Regional Native Plant Guide, which sold 20,000 copies.
Mitcalfe, who is survived by her partner and five children, was to have attended the wedding of one of her grandchildren the day she died.
She never got to wear the $10 charity shop dress she had bought for the occasion. Instead, she wore the frock dotted with lavender kowhai flowers to her own funeral.
Her family carried out her wishes not to embalm her but to cremate her in a cardboard casket. A conservationist to the end, she lived and died committed to the cause. Bess Manson Sources: Chris Horne, Mitcalfe family, Wellington Botanical Society.