30 LISTENER MARCH 7 2020
we see their value and marvel at their size.
Yet, when all is packed up and the beach
left behind for the day, the value of these
magnificent providers seems forgotten.
We have taken our trees for granted. We
have expected them to provide for us, to
give us shelter and shade, yet have given
very little back. We have used and abused
them. But we need them, desperately. As
our summers get hotter, relief from the
scorching heat will become paramount.
And yet shade is the simplest of the many
ways trees help reduce a rising climate.
These willing workers revolutionise our
existence every day, with every second
they stand.
Trees cool the air through a process
called transpiration. In the same way we
sweat to cool down, transpiration draws
water up through the soil by the trees’
roots, which then evaporates through the
leaves – cooling the atmosphere around
it. Perhaps the most well-understood role
that trees play is in balancing carbon
dioxide with oxygen. Heat from the sunor cities becomes trapped close to the
Earth by the carbon dioxide in the atmos-
phere and global temperatures rise. If we
have any hope of slowing this process,
which is making our home uninhabitable,
we must plant more trees. We must have
more trees working to extract carbon from
the atmosphere.
Of course, it’s not just us that these
benefactors work for. Trees support mul-
tiple ecosystems and life cycles. Imagine
an Aotearoa without our iconic birds.
We already have a shamefully long list
of threatened species numbering in their
thousands.
About 20 years ago, the Crown Research
Institute that I chaired, Landcare Research,
built a towering structure over the tōtara
forests of Ōkārito, in Westland; a man-
made scaffold that extended above the
treetops and allowed us to observe every
level of the canopy. A healthy forest
canopy teems with life; we saw untold
species of insect and bird, with flocks of
kākāriki bursting through the top intothe sunshine. It was a reminder that, as
ground dwellers, we miss so much, but it’s
these ancient communities that we must
preserve.I
am also facing extinction. For five
years, I have danced with cancer. I
refuse to call it a struggle or a battle- I am dancing with the disease. We
swing, we twist, sometimes we lift, and
too often we step on each other’s feet.
But my determined dance partner will
end our dance before I’m ready. Time
is running out for me, and it is with
profound sadness that I consider that
time is running out, too, for our precious
environment.
Although my doctor has exhausted
all the options, we as a nation have not
exhausted ours when it comes to saving
these species. This is a crisis. Time is
running out for the treasures of nature
that we love, and it is worth using every
last breath, all of our collective energy, to
FE save our land and secure our future.
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TREASURING TREES
- A young Rob at home
in Auckland in 1963. 2. In
Antarctica in 2008. 3. With
daughter Izzy who helped
with the writing of this
article. 4. Sir Rob with
Maggie Barry at his 2016
investiture.
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