Traditional Ma¯ori medicine may help kauri recover

Trees impacted by kauri dieback disease are showing signs of recovery thanks to traditional Ma¯ori medicine, a practitioner says.

Rongoa¯ Ma¯ori practitioner Tohe Ashby has been using ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori (traditional knowledge) on Northland kauri for 18 months.

He said monthly monitoring showed the treated trees had less leakage on their trunks and improved bark growth – positive signs for the kauri tree, one of the most endangered plants on the planet.

‘‘What we’re looking at is from a Ma¯ori perspective,’’ he said. ‘‘Ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori has what we call stories of the old people, and what they did with the sick trees, and the relationship between the tree and whales.’’

Ashby is a teacher in rongoa¯ Ma¯ori (traditional Ma¯ori medicine) at Te Wa¯nanga o Aotearoa and is from the tribes of Nga¯ti Te Tarawa, Nga¯ti Hine, Nga¯ti Kawa, Nga¯ti Rahiri and Nga¯puhi.

His treatment of kauri trees in Whanga¯rei’s Mount Manaia was the subject of a short documentary, Te Wao Nui (The

Great Forest), by Whanga¯rei director Nga¯riki Ngatae.

The film has been chosen for a gala showing at the world’s largest indigenous film festival, imagineNATIVE, in Toronto, Canada.

The film helps tell the traditional story of the link between kauri trees and whales, who were brothers before the whale decided to wander into the sea. The two had the same skin, with the kauri having growths like barnacles, Ashby said.

His treatment uses ground whalebone and spermaceti (a waxy substance that comes from the heads of sperm whales), applied to the trunk of the trees along with some seawater – almost like a traditional form of blood and bone and seaweed fertilisers.

The rongoa¯ Ma¯ori also involved companion planting, with beneficial trees planted around the kauri, Ashby said.

In 2019, research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand suggested ka¯nuka could help halt kauri dieback by paralysing the spores that spread the fatal pathogen Phytophthora agathidicida.

Ashby said he also supported the idea of the public being banned from some public tracks to stop kauri dieback spreading.

‘‘Let’s get on top of this kauri dieback first, and then we can be able to open our tracks again,’’ he said.

But he would like the Department of Conservation to open some tracks to rongoa¯ Ma¯ori practitioners to help treat kauri, given his reported success so far.

Ashby’s work is mostly on private land in Whanga¯rei and the mid-north, and he is now applying for a contract with the Ministry for Primary Industries.

Tohe Ashby says humans are kaitiaki, guardians of the forest, and need to help the sick kauri trees. Right: Kauri dieback causes trunks to weep, a phenomenon that can be seen on this tree in Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges.