People came to New Zealand to build a new life in a green land and visitors today arrive with many romantic images in mind. With a population of only 3.6 million, you would expect human interference to be limited but the country is in fact one of the most bizarre ecological disasters in the history of man. Forest cover has been reduced from about 85 percent since human colonization, while nearly three-quarters of the land area is given over to the production of food and commercial forestry, the latter essential to the national economy. Most of the trees are quick-growing radiata pine , an American species introduced because it is more profitable than any native variety; these days just ten percent of native forest remains.

The increase in demand for forestry- and wet-land goes unabated, even though commercial timber milling turns areas into virtual lunar deserts dotted with tree stumps. A by-product is added air pollution from fume-spitting, eighteen-wheeler logging trucks. And despite a sustained programme to eradicate them, pests like possums , wild deer, goats and rabbits pose a serious threat to the country's economic welfare.