HERO OF THE WHIO
Meet Hamiora Gibson, a hunter and conservationist whose work is bringing people together to help save the endangered whio, writes
It is a good day when you meet someone whose vision and enthusiasm for their work is so infectious it makes the world feel like a better place. Meet Tairāwhiti Gisborne’s hero hunter and conservationist Hamiora Gibson. Known on social media as ‘‘Sam the Trap Man’’, Gibson is a skilled bushman and educator whose online persona and East Coast catchments work is bringing people together, and helping to save the region’s whio, the threatened blue duck. Gibson works at NZ Landcare Trust, an independent, notfor-profit organisation, working with diverse interest groups to enrich New Zealand’s waterways.
There he is billed as someone who is as comfortable designing biodiversity strategies as he is wrestling takahē, mist-netting bats, using acoustic kiwi recorders or crawling around in the undergrowth searching for frogs.
On class trips to the ngahere (forest), school students see birds in their natural habitat and explore their relationship with rākau (trees). As Gibson puts it, when we look at the ngahere but don’t know each of them, they usually just see a lot of trees. It is much like when we walk into a room full of people who are strangers.
‘‘You know, they’re just people,’’ he says, adding that we best understand our relationship when a person or rākau can offer something, and we can offer them something back.
‘‘So when kids taste food from a tree or understand how it mends them, they place value on who that is and want to look after it. That’s how we try to teach things. We’re motivated by our puku, right?’’ he laughs.
Before children, Gibson and partner Roimata Sinclair often hunted together. Their 3-year-old son Rehua has gone on bush trips since crawling, and the couple still take him and baby daughter Te Kōtuku into the bush as much as they can.
Gibson says that Sinclair, who is formally trained in Māori museum heritage, is incredibly knowledgeable and carries a lot of the history.
Rehua makes appearances in Sam the Trap Man videos, sitting on his dad’s shoulders as Gibson explains the attributes of various native trees or shares handy bush skills.
Top tip: brew up a cuppa with koromiko leaves to treat a case of the runs.
Having started with Facebook and Instagram,
Sam the Trap Man is now edging towards 4000 TikTok followers. Gibson says the platform is just about trying to meet tamariki where they spend a lot of their time.
One post is a montage of intrepid hunting images and an ‘‘if you’re man enough to wear women’s leggings, here’s what I like about them. . . ’’ confession, regarding the Ridgeline NZ pants Gibson wears to prevent scratched-leg carnage when working off-track.
Saving the whio
A catchment, or whaitua, is an area where rain flows into a river, lake or other body of water.
Healthy water catchments support swimming, fishing, and native wildlife ecosystems, but many are under relentless attack from rats, stoats and other predators.
Gibson has long been a pest eradicator, since stoats attacked his family’s chickens and a friendly local Department of Conservation ranger taught him how to set traps for pests. The experience inspired a career stint as a DOC ranger, and now with Landcare, as Tairāwhiti/ East Coast catchments co-ordinator.
He co-ordinates the Eastern Whio Link, a volunteer, hunter, fisher and tangata whenua-led conservation project he started with seven hunting mates in early 2019, when local blue duck/whio were at the point of population collapse. Gibson and his mates noticed whio had almost disappeared from the area’s rivers and that they never heard kiwi calling any more.
Realising that DOC budgets didn’t stretch to looking after the place they had grown up hunting and fishing, they pooled resources and collected 250 traps to protect 25 kilometres of river. At that point, the four remaining whio pairs on the river had not bred for 10 years.
In the first year, the small hunter group eliminated enough stoats to allow the remaining pairs to breed 20 fledgling chicks. In the second year, the ducks bred another 26 chicks. With the whio population now stabilised, and the project in its third year, juvenile whio are starting to
spill over into neighbouring catchments. Gibson is working with neighbouring catchment groups to establish their own predator control operations. ‘‘We’re seeding other projects with whio, which is pretty exciting!’’ he says.
The Eastern Whio Link has more than 1100 traps, a project footprint of 30,000 hectares and seven schools from the region using the project as their outdoor classroom. The work attracts hunters, trampers and more than 100 volunteers sharing the responsibility for setting and monitoring the trapping network.
The project offers a different approach to conservation that people typically can’t get elsewhere. Hunters have been isolated from the conversation but as knowledgeable back country users, they are more than keen to be at the table.
‘‘We have hunters come from Tairāwhiti, Whakatāne, Tauranga, Auckland, and we’ve
even got a couple who fly their private plane up from the South Island to volunteer,’’ he says.
Gibson says his grandfather hunted and fished from the area, and taught him and others.
‘‘As a small group of hunters we thought this is the place that feeds us and has looked after us for generations. And if DOC doesn’t have the finances to be able to look after this ecosystem, it’s really up to us to look after the place.’’
He says they took that onboard and got a community agreement from DOC, meaning they’re able to use methodologies that sit well with them as a hunting, fishing and mana whenua community.
‘‘We can use an approach focused around mātauranga Māori and Western science, and we’re able to use the place and the project as a classroom to upskill our people and their ecosystem literacy.’’