Illustrated Transcript

Presented and Narrated by Dr Tim Flannery

Author of the Future Eaters

Narration: Australasia is the most isolated and

distinctive region, on earth.At its heart is the

world's largest island - Australia. A continent

born out of barren earth worn down by wind

and water for an infinity before man. But since

the time humans arrived, a new element has

shaped this land.

Fire has been the destroyer, and the creator of

life here -in a cycle that goes on to this day.

Narration: This region more than any other

has been transformed, by humans. By the first

arrivals - the Aborigines of Australia. By the

Maori of New Zealand, who came from

Polynesia in great ocean going canoes - and

by the people who followed in the wake of

Captain Cook -the latest to set foot on these

shores - the third and final wave of the people I

call the future eaters.

Tim Flannery

Author of 'The Future Eaters'

Flannery:

"The thing that sets us apart from the people

of the old world - is that we are all invaders.

We're colonisers - from three great waves of

human invasion into this region and I believe

all Australasians share something else in

common - we are all Future Eaters. Together

we've so upset the balance of life here that we

Tim Flannery

threaten the very land that support us and

through that our own survival."

Narration: Our story begins here, in Australia.

A vast stage - upon which life has led it's own

distinctive, evolutionary dance.This land is

dominated by creatures that have survived

nowhere else on the planet. Platypus

swimming, koala in tree We all recognise

these improbable animals today, but what

made them so different? - and how was our

natural history changed when humans first

arrived here?

Flannery:

"I'm setting out on a journey across this land,

but what I'm really trying to do is travel back in

time.

That's because much of this story happened

so long ago, that it's difficult to find evidence to

support it. But all over this country, in it's plant,

in it's animals, in it's rocks, you find clues as to

the way things were. And from that we can

start to tell about the forces that shaped this

country, the things that made Australia what it

is today"

Tim Flannery

Narration: All the lands of Australasia have

developed from the earliest times, as worlds

apart. 90 million years ago the ancient

continent of Gondwana began to fragment.

Tasmantis broke off first, to form New Zealand,

and New Caledonia.

Narration:Then, Meganesia - floating on a

massive continental crust formed New Guinea,

Tasmania, and the great continent of Australia.

In an evolutionary sense, Australia is a unique

experiment. On every other continent the

'placental' mammals, big energy users like

lions, elephants - and even humans, have won

the evolutionary race.

But here, in a race for extreme energy

efficiency, these creatures, marsupials like the

kangaroos - have evolved to a position of

pre-eminence.

The largest marsupial in the world, is the red

kangaroo. No other animal this big hops - but

hopping allows the kangaroo to recapture the

energy of each bound, in the tendons of its

legs.

The force of each leap pushes its gut back,

drawing air into its lungs - saving it from using

chest muscles to breath. Hopping has made

the kangaroo one of the most energy efficient

travellers on the planet.

The special conditions that drove this quest for

energy efficiency are most apparent here - in

the so called dead heart of the continent. This

land has such old and poor soil that if you're

not efficient you don't survive.

Uluru - Central Australia

Flannery: "If you wanna understand the

history of this continent there's no better place

to come than here Uluru the timeless rounded

features of the rock show that it just hasn't

been disturbed for hundreds of millions of

years, there's been no volcanoes, no mountain

building, no ice age here to rejuvenate this

place and as a result the soil here is old,

leeched and exhausted all that's left really is

just sand."

Tim Flannery

Uluru, Central Australia

Narration: The roots of Australia's infertility lie

in its thick crust. It hasn't crumpled to form

mountains, or been punctured by volcanoes.

Most importantly the ice age was unkind to

Australia. There were no glaciers to grind the

rocks, and release the elements that life

depends on.

Instead, the land lay comatose. Its nutrients

have been slowly leaching, and blowing away -

for eons.It's one of natures great paradoxes,

that the poorest ground supports the greatest

bio-diversity.

Australian Native Flower

The infertile soils of Western Australia give life

to over ten thousand species. In this heathland

known as kwongan, there aren't enough

resources for these plants to overwhelm each

other - so they're forced to co-exist.

Flannery: "These soils are so poor that

strongly competitive species just haven't been

able to dominate, instead we've got this

fantastic biodiversity and a most peculiar

biodiversity it is too, yes these plants are so

adapted to the infertility of the place that the

common garden fertiliser you throw on your

garden to make it grow will actually kill them." Kangaroo Paw

Narration: The plants of the heathland have

had to developed intimate relationships with

insects and other animals - for their survival.

The scarlet banksia lures the tiny honey

possum with it's abundant nectar. This

marsupial is the only mammal to depend

entirely on flowers for its food - and as it feeds,

it polinates the plants of the heathland.

But how can such a rich ecosystem have

grown out of such adversity?

Honey Dew Possum

Prof. Mike Archer

University of New South Wales

Mike Archer: "The colossal levels of

bio-diversity that characterise the Australian

heath some the what looks to be most

inhospitable, infertile-type country has to do

with this unique Australian response to the

these environments. The soils were very

nutrient-poor. But that enabled little pockets of

animals and plants to start to develop as

unique things in a hundred thousand different

places."

Prof. Mike Archer

Narration: Here, nature has been turned on

it's head. Plants, have even become predators

- like the pitcher plant which lures insects into

it's specially evolved trap - where they are

consumed in the plants own juices.

Even more extraordinary are the sundews -

they've evolved movement to actively capture

their prey, and extract the minerals that the soil

is unable to yield.

Sundews

Flannery: Australia's plants and animals have

been so successful in dealing with the infertility

of this continent, that often they've created

what amounts to a grand illusion, and nowhere

is that more apparent than here in the

rainforest.

Narration: In northern Queensland, the rich

tropical forests of are home to Australia's

greatest bio-diversity Tree kangaroos have

only recently left their ground dwelling

relatives. Now they forage in the safety of the

rainforest canopy. The bizarre mating dance of

the rifle bird is just one of the many

extravagant displays of life in this living Eden.

On the forest floor, the brush turkey builds it's

mound. It's one of the few birds that uses heat

generated by the decomposing litter, to

incubate its eggs.

The same rotting leaf litter releases the

essentials for life so rapidly, that nothing has

the chance to escape.

It makes the rainforest one of the most efficient

re-cycling systems ever evolved.

But elsewhere, the quest for efficiency has had

quite a different outcome.

Brush Turkey

Flannery:

"They say that the eye's are the windows to

the soul, but really they lead straight to the

brain, and the brain of the koala tells a story of

evolutionary woe that you just wouldn't

believe."

Narration:In the eucalypt forest, a koala and

her young cub search for the tender new

growth that make up their entire diet.

But eucalypt leaves are so full of dangerous

chemicals and so low in nutrients, that the

koala has evolved to be one of the greatest

energy misers, of all time.

It moves slowly and has a low reproductive

rate, but it's made one even greater sacrifice.

Flannery: "Marsupials are notorious for having

tiny brains, but the koala has really gone out

on a limb because it's the only mammal on

earth whose brain doesn't fit its skull, 40% of

the space inside there is just fluid, and that's

because the brain is a real extravagance. It

takes more energy to run than any other organ

in the body. And the koala has traded brain

power for survival".Wombat

Narration: Australia's three species of wombat

are the only large herbivores in the world, that

live in burrows.

By spending long periods underground, they

require only a third as much food as a

similar-sized kangaroo. Kangaroos bound off

It's long been believed that the marsupials are

primitive relics -surviving in Australia only

because of its isolation, but on the contrary -

now we're seeing just how well they've

adapted to Australia's demanding conditions.

Prof. Mike Archer

University of New South Wales

Mike Archer: It's entirely possible that

marsupials are better adapted to the kind of

strenuous demands that Australia has placed

on mammals of any... any kind than placental

mammals might have been. They certainly

have an extremely wide, what's called,

"metabolic scope". They're very responsive to

changes in the climate, to temperature.

They're much more tolerant of environmentaly

stressful conditions, placentals are fussier

about what they need to survive, that may

have given marsupials an edge. Marsupials

were so successful, that before humans

arrived - Australia was a land of giants.

Prof. Mike Archer

Narration: Of all the marsupial megafauna,

the largest was Diprotodon. Weighing over a

tonne, it was another energy conserver - with a

tiny brain. music 6 fades out track past

models. Diprotodon model

Diprotodon was just one of sixty species of

megafauna, that once roamed the land. Giant

flightless birds, horned turtles, and at least 20

kinds of kangaroo. At Flinders university in

Adelaide they're being brought back to life.

Diprotodon

Assoc. Prof. Rod Wells.

Flinder's University

Rod Wells: "The interesting thing about the

megafauna is that of course they're all leaf

eaters, or browsers, and that way of life is the

way of life of a junk food eater, um these

animals eat the rubbish plants and as a result

of that they have to be large, // If you have

long legs, you have long stride. // An animal

the size of Diprotodon, for instance, would

probably move at about 8 to 9 kilometres per

hour."

Prof.Rod Wells

Flinder's University

Narration: The giant short faced kangaroo

was unlike any living species. Indeed, in some

ways it had evolved to resemble humans.

Leigh Milne

Fright 3D Special Effects

Leigh Milne: "It's very tall when it's standing

up, it's higher than a man with a short face,

with bifocal vision, massively thickset, and

performing an action that is unique to these

animals I believe, is that they can raise their

arms above their shoulders, and that's how

Short Faced Kangaroo

they used to grasp vegetation and pull it down

to eat. And so, if you have a thing like this,

stooped, muscular... working through the trees

and the bushes in the early morning, well, you

might well imagine it's a man beast"

Narration: The megafauna thrived in Australia

for millions of years - in fact they were here till

just 60,000 years ago.

Flannery: "It might seem like a far off and

exotic time when giant creatures like these

walked the landscape, but really all of the

native animals that you can see in Australia

today were already in existence by then. You

could have heard the same kookaburras in the

trees, and seen the same lizards and snakes

on the ground. But on top of all of that was this

magnificent megafauna. As diverse and

spectacular as Africa has today. And the big

question really is what happened to these

creatures. Well I think they might have gone

on and on if it hadn't been for a new species

developing in far off Africa - and that species

was us".

Tim Flannery Australian

Museum

Narration: Our ancestors began their long

journey out of Africa - over a hundred

thousand years ago.

They were the product of a different

evolutionary race - a tooth and claw fight with

the fiercest predators on the planet.

Travelling eastwards, they eventually reached

South East Asia - an island realm rich in

coastal resources - where they lived from the

bounty of the sea.

The need to harvest marine life - like turtle

eggs, from off shore islands -would have been

the incentive that drove them, to develop the

worlds first water craft

An invention essential to the next stage of their

migration.

In what is now eastern Indonesia, they

reached the edge of the world they knew -

there a water barrier, almost one hundred

kilometres of open sea, stood before them.

Aerial track from headland to sea,

No-one can be certain when humans first

crossed that water barrier - the sea that

isolated Meganesia from the rest of the world.

The best estimate is between 40 and 60

thousand years ago - a time when Australia

and New Guinea were still joined

The first humans to enter what is now New

Guinea, would have been astonished by the

fauna.

They'd never have seen huge flightless birds

like the cassowary before - nor marsupials, like

the cuscus.

At first they lived by hunting and gathering in

the dense rainforest.Cassowary

As these Aboriginal migrants moved into the

highlands of New Guinea they found rich

volcanic soils.

Here they settled for the first time. They

became some of the worlds earliest farmers -

domesticating and cultivating plants from the

forest, and giving the world key food crops like

taro, and sugar cane.

This new settled way of life allowed them to

develop sophisticated societies - whose

culture has some of the most spectacular of all

human rituals.

Living in balance with nature, their traditional

way of life survives even today.

Rising sea levels divided New Guinea from

Australia just 10,000 years ago.

But long before then, perhaps as much as

60,000 years ago, people had already moved

south.

These first Australians, would have

encountered some of the most fearsome cold

blooded carnivores, since the age of the

dinosaurs.

The largest reptile of all was a relative of the

lace monitor - the seven meter long,

Megalania.

Lace Monitor

Narration: For millions of years the

megafauna had survived with these giant

predators - but they had no defences against

man.

Flannery: "To Australia's megafauna this was

a deadly weapon.... and that's because these

huge creatures were built for supreme energy

efficiency, they were slow moving and despite

their enormous heads they had tiny brains, but

worst of all they'd evolved for millions of years

in an ecosystem where nothing like humans

had ever existed and that made them naive,

they had no fear of human hunters"

Narration: The new arrivals had evolved in

competition with the great predators of the

African savanna - but it was only when they

entered Meganesia, that their language and

stone tools gave them a decisive advantage.

They had left behind their predators and

diseases, and were about to become all

powerful beings, in a virgin land.

As they moved south - beyond the Arnhem

land plateau, they found game-rich forests and

grasslands - ideal for hunting the vast herds of

megafauna.

Australia's open landscape would have

enabled people to quickly spread across the

continent - following trails that linked watering

and feeding sites for the megafauna.

The ancestors of the Aborigines had stumbled

across, what appeared to be - a land of plenty.

The prey they feasted on was large and tame,

and easily hunted.

I think it's possible, that these people could

have unleashed a wave of extinctions - across

the entire continent.

Assoc. Prof. Rod Wells.

Flinders University

Rod Wells: "Throughout the world, in the

Pleistocene, we've seen extinction of these

large animals. And that extinction's always

been correlated with the spread of human

beings, across the surface of the globe. And,

of course, the immediate inference is that

humans are the agent responsible for their

extinction. But it's also a period that correlates,

of course, with major climatic change,

associated with global glaciation. And so

you've got two confounding variables there."

Prof. Rod Wells

Narration: Was it climate change that killed off

Australia's megafauna, or was it man? It's

probably the hottest issue in Australia's pre

history.

Until recently, it was thought the megafauna

died out, around 20,000 years ago - the height

of the last ice age. But now some intriguing

evidence has turned up out here - in the centre

of the continent.

Lake Eyre

Today, Lake Eyre is a salt lake - hostile to just

about all life. It's so hot out here, that the tiny

Lake Eyre dragon walks on it's heels, to avoid

burning it's toes. It feeds on the ants, that

harvest insects - blown onto the baking salt

crust.Lake Eyre Dragon

But life here hasn't always been so hard.

The lake was once permanently full and

teeming with life - a favoured breeding ground

for the giant flightless bird - Geniornus.

About twice as heavy as today's emu, it's

axe-like beak suggests that it could eat tough

vegetation. It was a member of the

megafauna, that lived along the once lush

shores of Lake Eyre.

Remnants of life from that time, have

accumulated here - for the last two hundred

thousand years.

From these bands of sediment, we can tell

what lived here - and when they died.

Geniornus

Flannery "These cliffs preserve a record of

great climate change, the rocks here were

layed down at a time when this lake was full

and was teeming with life, there's even

remains of megafauna here mostly egg shells

of the great extinct bird Genyornis, but the

interesting part of that story is up over here."

If Geniornus died out because of climate

change in the last ice age, then their egg

shells would be here in the top layers of

sediment - laid down 20,000 years ago.

But the shell is only found in the older, lower

layers - going back to a time when the climate

was mild. It suggests that Genironus became

extinct much earlier - at the same time that I

think humans arrived.

Flannery: "This is the piece of an egg shell

laid by one of the last Genyornis ever to live in

this area, it's 60,000 thousand years old which

is about 40,000 years before the great climatic

crisis of the last ice age, which was previously

though to cause the extinction of the

megafauna. It suggests that it was something

earlier which caused the extinction of these

great animals was it the arrival of humans my

guess is that it was and that it occurred

throughout this continent long before climate

change could have ever had an effect on these

animals"

This is the first hard evidence that the arrival of

humans, rather than climate, played the

decisive role in megafaunal extinction.

But it was just the beginning of a cascade of

changes, that would reverberate through

Australia's ecosystems.

The extinction of the megafauna destroyed a

balance between plants and animals, that had

evolved over millions of years - now countless

tonnes of uneaten food covered the land.

Flannery: "If the last of the diprotodons were

dying these vast plains and woodlands and

rainforests were empty but the vegetation

those animals ate was still growing, here,

building up just waiting for that spark that

would set the continent ablaze"

Narration: This place has always been struck

by lightning, but now it ignited huge fires -

fuelled by the built up vegetation.

Fire had always been here in small areas like

the heathlands, but now great walls of flame

swept across the land, threatening the survival

of the smaller animals. A devastating new

force had been unleashed.

It's hard to know what happened next -but

there's evidence in the landscape, that the

nature of the country was dramatically

changed - by fire.

This is just one tiny remnant of the fire

sensitive forests that once covered vast areas

of the continents north, and east.

Flannery: "It's places like these that I think

offer us some clues as to the way Australia

has changed in the past, here a hot fire has

eaten deep into a rainforest and eucalypts are

taking over, and that's the kind of pattern I

think happened again and again over northern

and eastern Australia when fire was first let

loose on this continent."

Narration: Rainforests are killed by fire, but

the Eucalypts had evolved in the fire prone

areas, and they thrived on it.

In an unholy alliance with fire, the eucalypts

spread across the continent - destroying the

original forests, creating the Australian

landscape we know today.

I think the triumph of the eucalypts was to

change, even the climate of the continent. The

original forests had acted like a sponge -

storing huge quantities of moisture, and

transpiring it back into the atmosphere. This

allowed the monsoon rains to penetrate

hundreds of kilometres south. The rains fed a

permanent river system, that flowed inland -

filling the lakes at the heart of the continent.

They were a haven for great hosts of birds.

Pelicans, cormorants, stilts, all came here to

breed - in their millions.

Narration: It was clearly a different

environment from what you see today. John

Magee has been studying the climate record

here - dating back to the time when Lake Eyre

was permanently full.

John Magee

Australian National University

Magee: "A lake is a bit like a rain gauge for the

continent it represents moisture that's coming into

John McGee

the continent from the monsoon and early in this

phase of sediments that we see in this cliff which

start back at 120,000 years ago we see a very full

lake and a lake that was obviously supporting a lot

of wildlife, the rivers must have been perennially

flowing from Qld into here"

Narration: But how did Australia's great inland

sea, become a dry

Magee: "One possible explanation is that

changes in the vegetation in the catchments

up in the monsoon area has prevented

effective penetration of the moisture form the

monsoon into those catchments."

Narration: The newly established eucalypt

forests couldn't retain water - rain was no

longer carried inland - the rivers stopped

flowing.

The arrival of humans had sent the land

spiralling out of control.

Fire storms ravaged the country.

Plants, animals and resources were being

destroyed - and people faced dramatic climate

change.

It was a world that should be familiar to

modern Australians.

Narration: The story of how the first future

eaters recovered from this disaster - is one of

humanities greatest triumphs.

Flannery: "About 20 kilometres up this road

here is Oenpelli, in Arhnem Land. And that's

the place where Aboriginal culture has

survived, least influenced, over the last 200

years. And there we can get some real insights

into how people have lived in this continent for

tens of thousands of years, before Europeans

ever arrived here."

Narration: In time, the way Aboriginal people

learned to live with the land - would give rise to

an entirely new, and radically different human

culture.

Aboriginal Rock Art, Arhnem

Land

Narration: The Aborigines who live at

Oenpelli, believe their ancestors arrived here

from the north, carried across the seas by

Yingana - the creation mother.

Flannery: "Wow that's amazing isn't it

fantastic, I've never seen anything like that

before" Aboriginal rock art, and religion, are

among the oldest on the planet.Rock Painting in Arnhem Land

Flannery: "This is stunning there must be

hundreds and hundreds of img on that aye,

and that's the kangaroo kolobarr, barramundi."

Narration: The rock paintings of Arnhem Land

depict a great human endeavour, that goes

back - beyond recorded time.

Flannery:"This is the most amazing delicate

rock art I've ever seen, beautiful red ochre on

a white quartzite base, it's just extraordinarily

complex and it's full of meaning but I just lack

the key at the moment to understand it what

it's trying to say to me. It's a record of life here

I guess for who knows how many thousands of

years".

Aboriginal Rock Art, Arhnem

Land

Narration: Their art has survived - but the

story of how these people learned to live with

this land, has been largely lost. They must

have faced a crucial challenge - their very

existence was threatened.

Taming the fire, was the first step towards

creating a new balance.When Aborigines first

picked up the firestick they held a powerful

tool. I think they learned to fight fire with fire,

and began to burn off the built up vegetation -

reducing the fuel load that was feeding the

raging wild fires. Eventually, this developed

into a highly sophisticated system of 'firestick

farming' - still practiced in parts of northern

and central Australia.

Knowledge of how to manage the land through

burning, has been passed on by countless

generations of tribal elders.

Nugget Dawson

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Nugget: "A long time ago, we would watch

fires burning along in the distance.

We would see other fires burning towards us

too.

The fires would burn for days, not at sacred

places, mind you.

That was the way, burning off to regenerate

new grass for kangaroos, as well as other

edible food plants."

Nugget Dawson

Elder of the Anangu Aboriginal

people.

Narration: Animals in burnt land The bush

was burned into a patchwork of old and new

growth. It made an ideal habitat for the

remaining smaller animals.

They actually flourished under this regime of

firestick farming - and could now be hunted

sustainably.

For the Aborigines, burning was remarkably

like farming, because it brought new growth -

food for the animals they hunted.

Nugget Dawson

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Nugget: We burn fires which frighten the meat

animals away, but they only go as far as the

next woodland, and by the next afternoon

they're back.

When the rain falls the kangaroos find new

green growth and they'll breed and multiply.

Kangaroos are our meat, but they get very thin

if there is no green feed.

Many of our own delicious foods grow here

too.

Like desert raisins, bush tomatoes, sweet

nectar.

Food for us black people, for Anangu

Aboriginal people.

Narration: These people harvested the fruit

and grain producing plants that grew in the

wake of their burning. The big question is, why

they never took the next step and cultivated

them. But this continent was different. On top

of the problem of poor soils, there was

drought.

Long before the arrival of man, Australia was

already at the mercy of El Nino - an erratic

cycle of drought and flood.

The problem all Australia's inhabitants face is

never knowing when the next drought will

strike. They've got to be prepared to make to

best of the good times.

Willi Willi

Female kangaroos are constantly pregnant, or

have a young one in the pouch. That way, the

young kangaroo has a head start when the

drought breaks.

Rock wallabies can take advantage of the

briefest showers. They can even carry water in

their mouths to their young, waiting safely

above.

The most widespread adaptation is nomadism

- and the banded stilt is possibly the most

extraordinary nomad in the world. They can

wait on the coast for up to a decade for the

drought to break - then, within days of rain

filling the inland lakes, they fly thousands of

kilometres, to begin their breeding cycle.

In just seven weeks, these remarkable birds

can produce two clutches of eggs. Their

hatchlings feed on the rich briny soup which

fills the lakes. After just three weeks, they're

ready to fly.

Life on this continent has always depended on

movement from place to place - to live with the

cycle of drought and flood.

The Aborigines found that they could be no

different. The vagaries of Australia's climate

kept them on the move.

They simply couldn't settle down like people

elsewhere, to cultivate their land.

Instead, they moved across the land -following

what were to them 'highways', linking

resources from one place to another.

Nugget Dawson

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Nugget: We people have walked everywhere

since time began. This is how I used to walk

travelling along, following our Iwara.

Not along roads, but far across the land by

foot. It's not like travelling in a motor car. It's

putting one foot in front of the other. We

walked following the rainfall, and stayed where

it had fallen.

Nugget Dawson

We drank from all the different rock holes, and

lived around them for a while. After living there

for a while we'd go off travelling to somewhere

else. So we'd cover the entire landscape

hunting and living.

This is how we used to live. No white people.

Narration: The laws governing these journeys

are still passed down, from one generation to

the next - in song. They sing the paths the

Aboriginal people followed, as they travelled

across their country. They are a guide - to

food, water, and safe passage.

The knowledge recorded in song helped the

widely spread clans to come together.

Sometimes their journeys spanned the

continent.

These 'highways' became known to

Europeans as songlines. To Aboriginal people

they are a map, survival guide, and title deed,

rolled into one.

Flannery: "This ceremony represents just one

small link in a great chain of human

relationships that linked people in time and

place right across Australia, it essentially

turned this continent into a living network of

societies, and in an age before modern

transport and communication that has to

represent one of humanities greatest

achievements." After having changed

everything, these people had set a new pattern

for living with the special conditions of

Australia.

Narration: They'd established a remarkable

ecological stability - there's little evidence of

extinctions in the land, for tens of thousands of

years.

But it was a delicate balance. About three and

a half thousand years ago, the first

domesticated animal reached Australia and

New Guinea - the dingo.

In Asia, the dingo, had already become man's

best friend.

This predator's exquisite sense of smell, and

ability to track - became a gift to Aboriginal

hunters. Together, man and dingo made a

devastatingly efficient hunting team - but they

were hunting the same prey as the last of the

large carnivorous marsupials.

The Tasmanian devil, was once widespread

across the continent.

It was essentially a scavenger, but soon after

the arrival of the dingo, both it, and the dog like

thylacine disappeared from mainland Australia.

They were simply out-competed by humans

with pack hunting dingos.It could have been

the beginning of another wave of extinctions.

Animals of the rainforest, like tree kangaroos

were particularly vulnerable. I think they

survived, because people created sacred

sites, which they call 'story places'.

They were sanctuaries where no humans

could enter, places where fire and hunting

were taboo - areas where animals were

protected.

Flannery: "Most people don't realise how pre-

occupied the Aborigine's were with the

sustainable use of their resources, story

places were often conservation reserves, and

they included the prime breeding habitat of

many species as the animal built up in side the

reserves they'd move outside where they

could be sustainably hunted. They were a

really ingenious solution to the extreme

conservation difficulties that people face in a

place like Australia."

Story places are just one aspect of a complex

culture that created a new balance in this land.

Great meetings of the clans, called

corroborees by some tribes - allowed access

to trade and marriage partners - from outside

the clan.

But most importantly, they created a network

of kinship bonds across the continent -

guaranteeing their freedom to move through

the country.

But always, they managed their land - and that

was the key not just to their survival - but to

the survival of the land itself.

Flannery: "When I was a child I was told that

this was a wild place, I was taught that it was

an empty land - a terra nullius. But really this is

a human artefact, for in a very real sense

Aboriginal people created this environment,

and they developed a way of living here which

endured the test of time for 40,000 years ,

when my people arrived here, they threw that

lesson away and today we're struggling with

the same problems of fire, species extinction

and climate change that the Aboriginal people

triumphed over 40,000 years ago"

Narration: The aborigines were the first

people to so alter their environment that they

threatened their own existence.

But they went through the complete cycle of

future eating, and eventually developed a

highly sophisticated response, to this most

fragile of continents.

In the end they created an entirely new

ecology - one that depended on them for its

very survival.

For they were the people, who tamed the fire.

END ROLLER

© 1998, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Illustrated Transcript

Presented and Narrated by Dr Tim Flannery

Author of the Future Eaters

Narration: Between 3,500 and 1000 years ago,

the Pacific Ocean was criss-crossed by a sea

people, nomadic wanderers who colonised the

islands of Polynesia and beyond.

These Hawaiian sailors are their descendants,

and their twin-hulled canoe - or 'waka' - is an

accurate reconstruction of the vessels used by the

first Polynesians for their extraordinary voyages of

migration.

To mark the achievements of their ancestors,

these sailors have re-traced the route to the

southern ocean, to the most distant and difficult

land to reach, on the fringes of Australasia.

The Polynesians called this land Aotearoa, but we

know it today as New Zealand.

And the descendants of those first colonisers, out

here in force to welcome the waka from their

ancestral homeland, are now called the Maori.

After the Aboriginal peoples, some 40,000 years

before, this was the next wave of humans to

arrive in Australasia, and Iike the Aborigines in

Australia, they too were to have a profound

impact on nature.

Tim Flannery

Author of "The Future Eaters"

Flannery: In Australia, it's hard to know what it

was like in the beginning, when humans first

arrived - the detail's are just lost in the mists of

time. And we don't really know how a future eating

cycle will end because us Europeans have arrived

here so recently that we haven't yet seen the full

impact that we've made on this continent. So if

you really want to understand future eating the

place to be is here in New Zealand, because here

Dr Tim Flannery

a whole cycle of future eating has taken place in

just 800 years. The story really has gone full

circle.

Maori chant: 'Sow your seed, scatter to the wind

You may die, but there is still the life force

The flowing currents will help, o voyager

How many wait for the wind? O swimmer, ever

strong

See the godwit flying there

One has landed on the shore

Landed, landed, landed there forever'.

Narration: No-one exactly knows why thePolynesian ancestors of the Maori set out on theirgreat voyages of colonisation, in hugeocean-going canoes.The largest of these sophisticated sailing craftcould carry up to 250 people, as well as the plantsand animals that they'd need to start a new life.They were nomads of the wind, who settled onremote tropical islands, and lived there until foodresources were exhausted. Then they packed uptheir waka and moved on, navigating by the stars.

They first moved into the Pacific from south-east

Asia. For 2,000 years, they spread east and north

before finally heading south from Eastern

Polynesia to the land that was later to be known

as New Zealand. Aerials on coast When it finally

came, landfall in Aotearoa must have been

exhilarating. With a landmass of over 250,000

square kilometres, this new land was bigger than

all of the rest of Polynesia put together. Consisting

of two mountainous islands, swathed in dense

forest, this was one of the last great wildernesses.

Landscapes And, unlike Australia, this was a cool,

moist and fertile land, quite different from the tiny

tropical islands the voyagers had encountered

before.

Flannery: 'What these people had discovered

wasn't just another island, it was a whole new

micro-continent and it was different from their

homelands because this place wasn't tropical. It

was so far south that entire mountains were

covered in snow. It was a coool and ancient land,

that really wasn't suited to their tropical agriculture

and lifestyle but I think what would have struck

them most of all was that this place would have

seemed to stretch on forever and ever and it

would have been teeming with wildlife.

Narration: When word got back to Polynesia of

the bounty that could be found in the seas, coasts

and forests of Aoteoroa, it's highly probable that a

mass planned colonisation followed. Compared to

the tiny tropical islands of the Pacific, this was

land was massive, and teeming with game. The

travellers from across the ocean had never seen

wildlife of this kind before, or on this scale. And so

they began to set down roots in this land of plenty,

this gift from their gods. Away from the coasts,

they found a world of mystery: ancient, primeval

forests, unlike anything they'd encountered

before, full of extraordinary creatures.

For these misty canopies, and the species within

them, had evolved in isolation from the rest of the

world: ever since the break-up of the former

continent of Gondwana, 80 million years ago. This

was a strange and unique land, like no other on

Earth. Even today some of the animals are living

testament to the islands' ancient past. The tuatara

is a primitive reptile of a kind thought to be 200

million years old - dating back to New Zealand's

Gondwana origins, a relic from a time before the

dinosaurs. The young are hatched from

soft-shelled eggs, after an incubation of up to a

year - the longest of any reptile. Often called a

'living fossil', the tuatara has no close relations in

the reptile world, and has some unusual

anatomical details - including the remnants of a

third eye, hidden under the skin. It takes the place

in the ecosystem of mammal predators, of which

there are none on these islands.

If the tuatara is the reptilian equivalent of the

mammal predator, the giant weta is New

Zealand's equivalent of a rodent. Around the

same size as a mouse, and somewhat similar in

behaviour, it's the world's heaviest insect, and

another ancient Gondwana throwback

One of the rarest species is the rhinoceros weta.

Like the animals after which they are named they

use their 'horns' to good effect to resolve disputes

over partners or territory.

There are also around thirty species of giant

carnivorous snail. Voracious hunters, they prey on

giant earthworms, as well as on slugs and smaller

snails. But, more than anything else, Aotearoa,

when the Polynesians arrived, was a bird

paradise. Everywhere you went the forest

canopies were alive with birdsong, like a giant

prehistoric aviary.

Flannery: "For an Australian biologist this place is

like a mirror world; I can recognise most of the

trees and plants, but the animals are completely

different. Some of them, like the tuatara, died out

in Australia 100 million years ago, but because of

New Zealand's isolation they still survive here but

what makes this place really special is that this is

a land of birds, and many of them are flightless."

Narration: Flightlessness is a typical island

adaptation that the Polynesians would have

encountered right through their epic voyages

across the Pacific. Up on the cool higher slopes of

the mountains, the takahe feeds on tussock

grass. It's large size is a positive advantage, as

plant material here is difficult to digest and has

relatively low food value, so the larger the

herbivore, the more efficient it can be. And there's

no need for speed and agility when there are no

enemies on the ground to chase you. The

camouflaging green-brown patch on its back,

though, is a clue to where danger lurks. Falcon in

air and on prey.

The only endemic predators on the islands come

from the sky: spectacular birds of prey, like the

New Zealand Falcon. Along with the Australasian

harrier, this is one of the last raptors left on New

Zealand, but at the time of the arrival of the

Polynesians, there were several others, including

a gigantic eagle, which could easily have killed a

man. Despite its camouflage, the takahe and

other flightless foragers would have been easy

prey for a lethal aerobatic hunter with the sharpest

eyes in the business. As well as camouflaging

yourself, the other way to avoid daytime aerial

predators is to become nocturnal, like the national

bird, the kiwi. Its exceptionally long beak has been

developed to probe for insects in the soft forest

leaf-fall, and to fish in the forest streams. It's the

only bird in the world to have external nostrils at

the end of its beak, and one of the few to have

whiskers and an acute sense of smell. Even

though its egg has remained almost ostrich-sized,

the kiwi itself has evolved in the opposite way to

most island birds, and has shrunk its body size.

After about 80 days, the slow process of hatching

begins. Lack of oxygen stimulates the chick to

crack the shell open but the struggle to be free is

exhausting. To build up its strength, it will need to

rest for up to twelve hours before finally emerging

from the shell.

In fact, it's not quite true to say there are no

mammals at all on these islands, there are two

species, and they are both bats. But in these

damp and misty, predator-free forests, one

species - the short-tailed bat - seems to have

decided that its future lies on the ground, not in

the air. Even though it originally camme to these

islands on wings, this strange creature rarely uses

them today while feeding. They can fly, but may

well be in the process of evolving towards

flightlessness, like the kiwi.

But of all the flightless creatures found in this

ancient land, there was one that amazed the first

human arrivals: a walking giant that seemed to

offer them the promise of food for life, and which

they called therefore moa, meaning chicken.

There were 12 species of moa, and the largest

was enormous, sometimes up to three metres

high. These were the endemic megafauna of

Aoteorea - the dominant herbivores, filling the

same ecological niche as elephants do in Africa

today and they'd been around for over 70 million

of years.

Flannery: "There must have been thousands of

birds like this before humans arrived, and we

know quite a lot about them. In addition to

skeletons like this we've got eggs, feathers, and

even moa mummies. And the only danger these

birds knew would've been from above because

they were prayed on by the world's largest eagle.

It had claws like a tiger and could drop on bird like

this with the force of a concrete block. But pretty

soon danger was to come from a completely

different direction, from the people who were

eventually to call themselves the Maori."

Narration: When the Polynesians settled in

Aoteorea, they lived first of all on the coast and

brought with them the knowledge of how to use

fire to clear patches of land to grow crops. They

had brought seeds, plants and tubers from the

tropics, but found that only one, the kumara - or

sweet potato - would survive in these cooler lands

and then only on the warmer North Island.

But with such a bounty from nature, these first

settlers hunted and gathered, enjoying a diet of

seafood and seal meat from the coast, as well as

birds, plants and fruit from the forest.

The first Polynesians also brought with them a

deep respect for the natural world that's still alive

today. All elements of nature were seen as

ancestors and kin, bound by ancient ties and

rules, bringing an underlying shape and harmony

to the world, called 'whangapapa'.

Kevin Prime

Maori farmer & conservationist

Prime: "Whangapapa literally translated would

mean genealogy. But to Maoris it's a bit more than

that because the whole ethos of Maoridom really

comes from whangapapa so we believe that we

have come from Eomatur, who is the supreme

being, who had a number of other gods - Rangi

and Papa, the sky and the earth. And they had a

number of children who became all the gods of

the forest. So every Maori person likes to trace

their linkage back to the common ancestor and I

guess that's the importance of whangapapa as a

human, and also the importance of whangapapa

in your relationship to other people."

Kevin Prime

Narration: Deep in the forest, a ceremony thatcombines modern Christianity with an ancientMaori ritual. Plants and animals were thought tobe relatives, with a life essentially similar to that ofhumans; whose existence was not seen assomething separate from the natural world aroundthem. To cut down a tree without first paying one'srespects to Tane, the spirit of the forest wouldtherefore be intruding on one's own family,trampling disrespectfully on one's whangapapa.So the first chip from the tree is symbolicallyreturned to the forest, to Tane, and buried in thesoil. It's a symbol of respect and renewal, of newgrowth, new life. The Maori believe that the godshad granted man alone the right to take birds, fishand plants for their food and other survival needs,but only as long as the proper rituals wereobserved. Afterwards, the carvers are free to

claim their tree, which is destined to be shapedinto a ceremonial war canoe; watched over, asalways, by the spirits of the forest.

It was this intimacy with nature which helped the

Maori to find food in the forest, especially birds. To

succeed as hunters they became the ultimate

bird-watchers, studying where and when different

species fed and nested, and passing on that

knowledge from generation to generation. But to

begin with, hunting was easy, as the many

species of flightless or semi-flightless birds were

completely unused to predators, and had no fear

of man. They were especially vulnerable to

extinction, through over-hunting, as many had

evolved slow reproductive cycles, some breeding

just once every four years.

Birds that are rare today, like the semi-flightless

night parrot, the kakapo, were then abundant, and

hunted for their decorative feathers as well as

their meat. Common flightless birds like the weka,

or ground hen, were particularly important for the

Maori diet, as they provided plenty of meat in one

easy catch. These, like the kiwi and others, were

usually hunted with the help of dogs, which they

brought with them from Polynesia. The practice is

banned today in New Zealand itself, but still

carried out on the nearby Chatham Islands.

But as human populations increased, hunting on

this scale was bound to have an impact on the

flightless birds, especially the large ones, like the

moa. Deep in the South Island's caves, are holes

in the rock where the giant creatures fell and were

unable to escape, eventually starving to death.

But, crammed though they are with bones, these

moa death traps never threatened the population.

It was only when Man arrived on Aoteoroa that

extinction beckoned.

Flannery: "Some moa were among the largest

birds that ever lived. And to judge from the size of

this leg-bone, their drumsticks must have been

enormous. And this meat was probably here for

the taking for the first people who arrived in New

Zealand. That's because these birds were naïve.

All a hunter probably had to do was walk up to

them, put a noose over their head and walk them

off to the nearest ovens. And I reckon that faced

with an abundance of meat like that I would have

downed the gardening tools and just settled in for

a long life of feasting. Hangi feast sequence in

marae. Today the traditional communal hangi, or

feast, involves the slaughter of a pig, sheep or

cow, but in the early days of colonisation the

Polynesians would have gorged themselves on

moa."

Narration: The slaughter was incredibly wasteful

- in some cases only the drumsticks were taken,

the rest discarded; the enormous wastage of meat

clear evidence that the Moa were initially

abundant and easy to hunt. This abundance of

meat supported huge settlements, where people

lived in peace: the largest to exist in New Zealand

until the arrival of the Europeans. But then,

suddenly, the moa were gone.

Prof. James Belich

University of Auckland

Belich: "There were certain areas which were

prime Moa hunting areas. Partly because they

had high populations, partly because they had

river access in to the interior of New Zealand.

What would happen is that Maori hunting parties

would go in during the breeding season. And at

that time, of course, the hunting could be funded

by eating the eggs, which were the perfect travel

food, you know, requiring little preparation, and so

on. And the torpid males who tended to sit on the

eggs would be relatively easy game. So, Moa

populations in their peak areas are attacked at

both ends, eggs and fathers. And the resulting

meat is rapidly rafted down these fast-flowing

rivers to a kind of meat-processing base-camp at

the mouth of the rivers. So those key areas were

creamed-off pretty fast. Rats"

Narration: The Polynesian rat, or 'kiore', which

were eaten by the Maori, had arrived with the first

waka, and quickly began to plunder the smaller

birds and animals.With only birds of prey to fear,

and the hunting traps of the Maori, their numbers

soon multiplied to plague proportions.

Flannery: The Maori say they brought the

Polynesian rat with them deliberately, but I'm not

so sure. For back where they came from it was a

serious agricultural pest, and when it arrived here,

whether as stowaway or livestock, it was to

become a major plague in these forests. And

that's because they were so long isolated that

nothing like a rat had ever existed in them before.

The arrival of the first rats here was to set off an

ecological holocaust.

Narration:In only 400-500 years, the bird

population of Aoteorea had been decimated by

the Polynesian future eaters and the rats they

brought with them, and the great megafauna were

extinct.

With the moa gone, the Polynesians became

dependent on hunting smaller birds as a major

source of sustenance. In special workshops,

skilled hands made traps to catch specific

species. Some of these ingenious traps were

self-triggering, while others, like this noose had to

be manually operated.

With the other flightless birds also depleted, the

most important game birds now were pigeons. In

the autumn and winter they gorge themselves on

fruit, and are easy to catch, using nooses dipped

in a trough, and baited with berries. The next most

important bird for hunting purposes was the kaka,

the forest parrot, which favoured the higher

perches of the beech forests. They were caught

using decoy birds, or by single nooses pulled tight

by waiting hunters. Water fowl like the black stilt

were stalked through the wetlands. While visiting

migrants, like the godwit, would gather in numbers

by the waters edge, where nooses and nets could

be hidden, to entangle their long legs and feet.

Catching these flocks of visiting birds took great

skill, but their numbers were substantial, and they

provided a great seasonal feast for the Maori.

But soon even the great numbers of migrant

waterfowl and seabirds also became part of the

future eating cycle as the era of food abundance

on Aotearoa started to come to an end. For the

Maori were still hunter-gatherers, and consumed

the supply of meat from birds faster than species

like the gannet could regenerate. Despite their

understanding of the need to conserve species,

the Polynesian settlers steadily depleted the

supply of birds, as human numbers expanded on

the high protein diet. The Maori, it seems, were,

as yet unable to convert their intimate knowledge

of nature into principles that would help them to

conserve their precious environmental resources.

Flannery: "It seems to me that there's a

fundamental contradiction here for the Maori had

a deep respect for plants and animals. And yet

they hunted the moa and other megafauna to

extinction, turning this from a land of plenty into a

land of hunger. Well, I think that happened

because, then, the Maori were newcomers, and

they didn't fully understaand the vulnerability of

life here. And It takes a long time to build the

knowledge you need to manage resources

effectively. Well all the while their population was

building until finally their food resources were

almost exhausted, and it was only then that they

realised the full impact of their future eating

habits."

Narration: Without effective communal efforts at

conservation, even the coastal protein resources

were running out.

This was the next stage of the future eating cycle:

eliminating food resources in order of what's

easiest to hunt or gather and what's most

nutritious.

Within minutes the pup springs into life, and is

ready to take to the waters, though its mother has

other ideas.

Seals, sea lions and penguins were once

abundant all around the coasts, but, as population

pressure grew, they too all but disappeared from

the more populous North Island. Seal breeding

colonies are now only found on remoter parts of

the South Island, and it's here that the last of the

yellow-eyed penguin colonies have also survived.

The yellow-eyed penguin breeds only in New

Zealand and is one of 30 species once found

here, in what was probably a global centre for

penguin evolution. Unusually, they often prefer to

nest away from the shore, and every evening they

can be seen crossing the beaches and making

the long trek back up the hill slopes to the

sheltering forest beyond. They nest in burrows,

and among the roots and caves of the tree-lined

cliffs, but as the coastal forests were gradually

cleared by the Maori for farms, the nest sites

began to disappear. Predation from dogs and the

Maori themselves accelerated the decline of the

species, and today it has the dubious distinction

of being the rarest penguin in the world.

For the Polynesian voyagers, the cycle of future

eating that had followed them them around the

Pacific had caught up with them again, even in

this land of plenty. Perhaps they were deluded by

the abundance of wildlife on Aotearoa, with its

millions of birds, huge numbers of easily-hunted

sea mammals lazing on it's shores. Whatever the

reason, it appears that these expert hunters

underestimated their impact on the naïve,

vulnerable species of Aoteorea, and were

unprepared for the food shortages that were to

follow. But the evidence from Maori rubbish

dumps is clear: the diet of sea mammals and sea

food got smaller and smaller over time, as these

coastal resources themselves were run down.

With the moa gone, other birds and seal breeding

colonies seriously depleted, the Maori needed to

find other ways to feed themselves, if they were to

survive at all in the land of the long white cloud.

As hunger began to stalk the land, the Maori had

no choice but to expand their farming. To open up

the land to farms and bracken, whose root was

eaten as a staple crop, 40% of New Zealand's

native forests were burnt. In the North island,

sweet potato horticulture was developed, even

though the cool climate made this difficult.

Elsewhere, the Maori were forced to rely on

bracken root, and protein deficiency and

undernourishment became widespread.

Meanwhile, hunters moved further and further

inland in search of elusive bird protein, often

returning empty-handed. For many, this was a

time of hardship and hunger, but it forced the

Maori to organise in order to survive, and

triggered a period of rapid cultural change and

turmoil.

Flannery: "By the beginning of the 16th century

the Maori had begun to build great fortresses

called pa, right across Aoteoroa. This one here on

One Tree Hill in the middle of Auckland is

enormous. Here people have sculpted a whole

mountainside into a fort and there must have

been thousands of warriors living on this site.

Great fortresses like this suggest to me that Maori

people had actually entered the next stage of

future eating - and that meant war, a war over

resources."

Narration:The famous 'haka' war dance became

increasingly important at this time. This one is

saying 'we will stand our ground'. The actual

frequency of full-scale war was probably low, as

this was a luxury rarely afforded in a resource-

depleted land. This was the beginning of the

so-called 'Classical' period of Maori history, a time

of fortress building, conflict, and even sometimes

cannibalism. The hundreds of pa across the land

were not only symbols of status and power, but

they also had the more practical function of being

fortified food stores.

Prof. James Belich

Auckland University

Belich: "Once by whatever series of accidents,

one group developed pa from peaceful villages or

kianga, and the associated food storage pits, then

they'd have a military advantage over other

groups. They could raid and not be counter-

raided. So therefore an arms race or pa race

suddenly begins, whereby all groups have to

develop pa to protect themselves from those who

have them. In addition to that, as with many

changes in maori society there's this rivalry for

mana amongst maori groups, which means that,

you know, if you're a chief and your neighbours

got a pa, then you'll have no followers. So, even

within groups who never fought each other, the

fact that one had a pa, and another related group

didn't was a stimulus to build. So you have

spasms of pa building moving through the country

at quite rapid rates."

Prof. James Belich

Flannery: I wonder what it would have been like

to have been a Maori in the 16th century, when

there was far too many people and not enough

food. But the whole thing about future eating is

that it's a cycle, and by the beginning o the 16th

century I think the Maori had really hit rock

bottom. And I suppose that's when you start

reflecting on where you are and the nature of the

land your in, and you start adapting to it. And I

think from then on we see in Maori society the first

glimmerings of conservation, of conserving their

resources for the future. And from then on that

was to play an increasingly important role in the

new societies that they were beginning to invent.

Maori Chant:

Pull up the root of the flax

From whence comes its sustenance

Farewell, go in peace

Fly to the shoreland,

fly with the tide

Ask me what is the greatest thing

My reply is, it is Man,

it is Man, it is Man

Narration: The tattoo was a mark of identity,

adulthood and above all status, increasingly

important in the new tribal groupings that began to

develop. It was the ultimate adornment, the

external expression of the spirituality

within.Personal spirituality was also expressed

collectively in art forms of all kinds, but notably the

wood carving of the marae, the great communal

meeting-houses. Society became more

hierarchical and organised, as communities were

forced to face up to their worsening resource

crisis, triggered by the end of the great birds, the

moa.

Kevin Prime

Maori farmer and conservationist

Prime:

"The Maori do not believe that they caused the

extinction of the moa. But I also believe that the

extinction of the moa certainly was a huge shock for all

Maoridom. Because that was the one bird that could

provide a feed for the whole tribe. And I think the

development of a lot of the Maori conservation ethic

had developed then. The ethos of conservation had

developed after the demise of the moa."

Kevin Prime

Narration: Conservation for the Maori involved

strengthening the traditional rules that governed

the harvesting of nature's resources, and

enforcing them on a community-wide basis.

Today's fishermen have to obey government laws

that restrict where and when they can fish, and

which size fish they have to throw back. So it was

with the Maori of the 16th century, who had to

obey the spiritual restrictions laid down by the

local expert on nature, or tohunga. They knew to

avoid breeding grounds, and creatures that were

spawning.

These reefs are among the most productive in the

world, home to a complex chain of life, the waters

around them rich with fish and micro-organisms. A

crayfish unleashes her spawn on the tide, as

many as a million at one time. As they grow, they

feed on micro-organisms and themselves become

prey for larger creatures, only a few surviving to

adulthood. All over the seabed, new life is being

born, re-charging the chain of creation that keeps

these seas alive and productive. A sting ray

prepares for take-off. It's wing-like flaps lift it

through the deep, in search of shellfish and crabs,

one of the great sights of this underwater world.

The early Maori believed that it was the special

role of fish to be caught and put to use, the very

reason for their existence. According to myth,

Aotearoa itself had been a fish, brought up from

the depths by the god, Maui, and turned into a

homeland for human beings. Fish Edible species

were respected, therefore, as spiritual entities,

and elaborate systems were developed for their

management.

The groper, for example, could only be caught

during a short season around sunken rocks, deep

out at sea. These fishing grounds were very much

prized and 'tapu', which means sacred, under

restriction. Sharks, on the other hand, were

regarded as warrior species, and were hunted

with caution. Here, a marlin has trapped a school

of mackerel, which have formed a large defensive

ball that the predator finds difficult to penetrate.

So the marlin is cleverly working the ball upwards

towards the surface, knowing that there the ball

will break, and the fish scatter, providing a bounty

for all. Whales were particularly sacred and

symbolised plenty, having come from the bountiful

paradise homeland of Hawaiki. This is still one of

the great places in the world to see whales, with

several species coming here to feed, including the

humpback, pilot, orca, right and sperm whales.

Ambassadors from their homeland, as well as

revered and distant kin, whales were at the

pinnacle of a developing culture of conservation,

bound up in spiritually enforced concepts like tapu

and rahui.

Kevin Prime

Maori farmer and conservationist

Prime: "Well rahui was a sort of temporary or

sometimes permanent reservation status I

suppose would be the modern terminology. That

sets aside certain areas to protect a species or to

allow the numbers to build up. So if you..I know in

our particular area there's a place where there's a

rahui kiwi, and no-one was allowed to hunt kiwi in

that particular area, that particular valley because

it was kiwi grew well in it, there was all the bugs

there, the right food for them. And they could

breed well. But any kiwi that were kicked out, the

young ones that ventured out of that area, the

rahui area, they could be freely hunted. So,

basically, rahui was a temporary restriction on

certain areas, you know whether it was eels,

pigeons, rats, kiwis, whatever."

One contemporary example of rahui concerns theharvesting on Snares Island of sooty shearwaters,or muttonbirds. Cooked and preserved in theirown fat, muttonbirds were often kept ashigh-protein food reserves, for when othersources of protein became scarce. Strict tribalrules govern the resource - only an agreednumber of young chicks are taken during theseason, the only time that the rahui is temporarilylifted. This controlled harvest leaves the adultsfree to breed again the next season, ensuring thesustainability of the resource, a managementsystem first developed in response to the foodcrisis of the 16th century.

Prof. James Belich

Auckland Unversity

Belich: "There's an increased use of tapu, rahui,

sacred prescriptions to prevent the taking of

vulnerable resources outside these appropriate

times. And there's a broadening in the net that

your Maori hunter-gatherer applies to nature. So a

lot of foods are processed carefully and eaten.

There are many kinds of berries that take days to

process. There's a lot more smaller birds become

targets. Mussels, for example, freshwater

mussels, there's some traditional evidence that

early in pre-history they were considered a

contemptible food. In late pre-history they were

considered a very valuable food. So you can see

the shift from a few big easy targets to many small

difficult targets, and from extractive economics to

sustainable economics."

Narration: The Maori had, it seemed, for the first

time, confronted the resource crisis they had

created and moved forward into the final phase of

the future eating cycle. They had become warlike

sweet potato farmers, living in large compounds

with hierarchical structures, and strict rules for

enforcing the conservation of nature. These

systems were built on two foundations - the

spiritual oneness with nature and traditional

knowledge that had been handed down for

generations.

That knowledge can still be found today in the

Maori heartlands. Eel fishing is a family business

bound by ancient rahui systems and access rights

that have been passed from father to son.

Likewise, many still have the skills to farm and

manage the forest. This Maori woman is gathering

the natural dyes she needs for weaving flax; using

the bark from carefully conserved trees. Plants

from the forest are used by the Maori in many

different ways, including paints, food and

medicines. If you scratch the surface of the

modern way of life, it's still possible to find the

ethos of conservation. Many communities still

have tohunga, for example - elders who manage

the forest resources. Even today, the lessons

learnt in the times of hardship survive. And who

knows how successful the Maori might have been

as managers of nature, if their efforts had not

been suddenly forestalled.

Flannery: Right through their travels across the

Pacific, the Polynesian voyagers had been driven

by a cycle of future eating, over exploiting natures

resources and then moving on to colonize a new

virginal island home. But here in New Zealand, it

was different, this was really the end of the line,

there were no new islands to colonize from here

and here the resource crisis was extreme. The

Maori were just beginning to develop ways of

conserving nature, when suddenly, 200 years ago,

the future of Aotearoa was taken out of their

hands alone. For a new wave of invaders had

appeared on the horizon.

Narration: Soon the knowledge about this great,

green, fertile land of mountains and forests, with

whales, timber and enormous farming potential

would find its way back to another seafaring

nation on the other side of the world. And then

another period of colonisation would begin: the

third and most damaging wave of invaders. The

Maori could only watch helplessly, as the future

eating cycle began all over again.

Maori Chant:

So many deaths, so many losses

Farewell spirits, farewell all

Long Hawaiki, Hawaiki far away

Farewell spirits, go depart For you the dawn, the

morning tide

For us the evening tide, farewell.

END ROLLER

© 1998, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Illustrated Transcript

Presented and Narrated by Dr Tim Flannery

Author of the Future Eaters

Narration: Ever since Europeans arrived in

Australasia, nature, has been on the run.

Red deer, are just one of thousands of introduced

species that have infested New Zealand.

And every year, in Australia - the cycle of natural

disasters, continues.

It's as if the land, is spiralling out of control.

In Sydney harbour, tall ships gathered to

celebrate the bi-centenary of the arrival of the

British, in 1788.

Ever since, wave after wave of migrants, from

around the world - have made Australia, and New

Zealand - their home.

Tim Flannery

Author of 'The Future Eaters'

Flannery: "It's easy to imagine that us

Australasians have really made a secure future

for ourselves here, but ever since the time the first

Europeans arrived we've altered nature so much

that we've become an exterminator species the

third and most damaging wave of the people I call

the future eaters."

Narration: Those first settlers to land in Australia

and New Zealand, saw their role as taming an

alien, and sometimes hostile environment - a 'new

frontier'.

But there was a problem - someone had got here

first - at least 40,000 years ago.

The Aborigines had developed a lifestyle so

specialised, so in tune with Australia's demanding

conditions, that the Europeans couldn't

comprehend it.

Instead they convinced themselves that Australia

was a terra nullius - an empty land, there for the

taking.

In New Zealand, after decades of warfare and

broken treaties, the Maori were finally subdued.

War and disease, so decimated the Aborigines

and Maori - that it seemed they'd be part of the

next wave of extinctions in Australasia. For many

Europeans, it was convenient and inevitable - a

process of 'natural selection'.

And the lands themselves - despite their great

age, they christened them the 'new lands'

New Zealand, New Caledonia, New Guinea and

the great island continent of New Holland, later

re-named Australia.

When Captain James Cook first saw this place,

he described it as being like 'a gentleman's park'.

For the British, Cook's description brought to mind

the richest and most fertile of lands. But in this

vision of an 'Arcadia', they were badly deceived.

The land supported a rich diversity of

extraordinary wildlife.

But in reality this diversity had evolved in one of

the most nutrient-poor regions, on the planet.

Only creatures and plants that were highly

energy-efficient, thrived here. Far from

discovering a land of plenty, the colonists had set

foot on some of the poorest soils in the world - but

that wasn't all.

Flannery: "This land had another bitter lesson in

stall for those who misunderstood it. As the

explorers pushed inland they expected to find a

living river system, an Amazon or a Mississippi

but instead this is what they discovered a great

river system indeed but one that only flowed once

or twice a decade".

When it rains, water from distant storms flows

down the dry creeks -releasing precious nutrients

stored in their beds.

It can quickly become a flood - carrying massive

volumes of water across the continent. .

This is a time of plenty - a trigger for new life.

Native fish, that have been trapped in the

billabongs, can now travel to their breeding

grounds. Birds, like cormorants, gorge themselves

in the rich waters. Even the infertile soil, blooms

with such an abundance of life - that the land can

appear as rich as that of Europe

But drought, has always followed.

The native animals have evolved to survive with it

- but it brought disaster to the 'new' arrivals.

Flannery: "The people that sat around this fire

place dreamed of establishing a pastoral empire

here at old Kanyaka. In the 19th century the son

of an English aristocrat came out to this country

during a good year and decided to sink the family

fortune into the place. Pretty soon he'd built this

village with 70 people living in it, but then in 1864

the inevitable drought hit and he had to walk

away, he had to abandon his newly built English

manor house, leaving the family dreams and their

fortune in ruins"

Narration: Despite disasters like this, each good

season saw more and more farmers move onto

the land. Government policy actually forced them

to carry at least 4 times the density of sheep, as

today.

The result was wholesale massacre of the native

pastures - by hoof and jaw.

When the next drought came it brought

catastrophe. Erosion In this very spot in the

Flinders Ranges, 40,000 sheep died in just one

season.

Craig Nixon

Flinders Ranges National Park.

Nixon: "Those sheep didn't die of thirst they died

of starvation, so basically they ate everything that

was here er completely and utterly gone, er their

hooves sort of pounded this soil into a powder er

the first rains that came along and washed it all

away, as a result we've got this gully erosion. Now

that may have been ok, er the country may have

survived with that given some more good years

but hot on the heels of that 1880 drought came

the rabbits."

It was bad enough that the new invaders

overstocked the land - but they even brought their

own pests with them.

Rabbits, foxes, and a whole menagerie of other

European creatures.There were only two native

predators, capable of holding back these

introduced pests.

The wedge-tailed eagle, is a lethal hunter - it's

one of the worlds largest raptors.

The other natural defender, was the dingo - it can

even kill foxes and cats. But their European

traditions taught the farmers that these natural

predators, were in fact, the pests.

They were systematically wiped out by bounty

hunters.

Now, introduced species like the fox, rabbit and

feral cat could spread unchallenged across the

continent, in plague proportions - triggering a

hundred years of ecological turmoil. People

herding rabbits in fence

Narration: Across the Tasman Sea in New

Zealand, the colonists were repeating the same

mistakes made in Australia - with devastating

consequences for wildlife. These fertile,

temperate islands were more familiar to the

Europeans than the unpredictable dry lands of

Australia. Track across misty forest

When the settlers first arrived, 60% was still

ancient forests of kauri, beech, and podocarp - all

of them singing with life - for this was a land of

birds. On the forest floor they found unique

creatures, like the tuatara - a 200 million year old

throwback to the prehistoric continent of

Gondwana. Tuatara

And the mouse-sized giant weta, the largest

cricket in the world.

Giant Weta

Despite being hunted by the Maori, many

flightless birds like the takahe, still survived.

With no ground-based, mammal carnivorous, life

for this army of flightless foragers had been

relatively easy. But not even the national bird, the

kiwi, was safe from the impact of the latest human

arrivals.

Flannery: "New Zealand's wildlife had evolved in

isolation for something like 70 million years, and

that meant that it was superbly adapted to the

special conditions of New Zealand. But it came at

a great cost for that same isolation meant that

New plants and animals were extremely

vulnerable to change"

Narration: As in Australia, the first settlers

cleared the forests - triggering a cascade of

environmental change.

On steeper slopes, the clearing and burning often

led to erosion, and there was inevitable species

loss. Sheep on hilltop But the sheep and cattle

flourished - generating one of the highest

standards of living in the world.

Flush with the wealth from exports of meat and

wool, the colonists set about building another

England. Horses and hounds hunt Recreational

activities were imported from the 'old country'. But

there was a severe shortage of creatures to hunt.

So a huge variety of alien species was brought in,

and set free. Rabbits proved to be the same

ecological disaster, they were in Australia. Here

too they quickly reached plague proportions.

In an attempt to control them, carnivorous

mammals were introduced. But the hundreds of

ferrets, stoats and weasels, found it easier to hunt

the native birds, especially the flightless ones -

which were much less elusive than the fleet-

footed rabbit.

As these mammal predators multiplied, their

impact on the native birds became catastrophic.

And soon another, even larger carnivore was to

stalk the woods.

Thousands of feral cats, descendants of those

first brought in as pets, went wild, and began to

prey on the bird life of the islands, already under

siege from rats, and other predators.

Not even the mountain grasslands and forests

were safe from the new invaders. Red deer Red

deer, brought in to be hunted, quickly multiplied -

becoming a national pest. As well as overgrazing

grasslands, they gorged themselves on the new

growth in the native forests - turning the forest

floor into a wasteland.

The only part of the native vegetation that seemed

to be safe from the invasion, was the higher

canopy of the forests. It's up here that many of the

native birds feed and nest.

They also play a vital role in regenerating the

forest. By eating the fruit and nectar they pollinate

plants and distribute seeds in their droppings.

But by the 1930s it was noticed that the dense,

green canopies of the native forests were

changing colour, and dying.

The culprit was yet another introduced creature -

the Australian brush-tailed possum.

This leaf-eating marsupial had been imported to

establish a fur industry.

No-one imagined then, that it might threaten the

very forests of New Zealand - or that it could be

responsible for the disappearance of many native

birds, like the kokako. After decades, infra-red

cameras finally confirmed people's worst fears -

the supposedly vegetarian possum, had been

preying on the eggs and chicks of native birds, all

along.

Soon the situation for the nation's forests and

birds, was critical.

There were estimated to be around 70 million

possums on the loose, devouring the equivalent

of 140,000 football fields of native forest every

day.

Flannery: "If I could have walked here 200 years

ago, I would have seen a forest that was alive

with the calls of thousands of birds. But ever since

the Europeans have arrived this forest has been

slowly silenced and most of the birds that lived

here are now extinct. All of those pollinators of

plants, dispersers of seeds and eaters of insect

pests are gone. It's as if the fabric of the entire

ecosystem has just been torn apart."

Narration: Australia's forests and grasslands

were suffering from a different problem.

The Aboriginal system of managing the land

through fire had gone - the Europeans had put an

end to it. This firestick farming, had played an

important role, in sustaining the medium sized

marsupials.

The rufus hare wallaby, is rarely sighted today -

yet, just a century ago, it was one of Australia's

most common animals. Brush tailed bettong The

brush tailed bettong, was also widespread

throughout the country. And the bilby, would have

been familiar, to all the Aboriginal people of inland

Australia. But now, all these animals, are teetering

on the brink of extinction. The demise of the

marsupials has been silent and almost invisible.

The only people who witnessed the process are

the desert Aborigines. And it happened, so

recently - that elders like Nugget Dawson still

remember hunting and eating these animals.

Nugget Dawson

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Nugget Dawson:"This is wayuta (possum) it runs

around the treetops and calls out. It used to live

all over here.We were so familiar with these

animals once, when we were children, and when

those that have passed away were alive, we knew

them all."Nugget Dawson

Narration: Nugget lives near Uluru, a place

where Aborigines have been given title to their

land. It's one of the few areas where traditional

land management has been re-introduced - using

firestick farming.

Nugget Dawson:"By burning we generate fresh

new growth,which is good feed for the kangaroo

and all these animals who loved to eat fresh

green growth and fresh green grass. But because

there isn't much burning any more they've all died

out and all we get are these stuffed skins. What

are we to do?"

It's out here, in the arid zone, that the loss has

been highest.

Scientists from South Australia are conducting a

fauna survey, to discover the extent of the

damage - and to see if the few survivors are still

breeding.

They're working together with the Anangu

Pitjantjara people, custodians of this land.

Frank: "We can see only one place now, where

there's only few rock wallabies are now. "

Peter Copley

Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources

Peter Copley: "There's one colony just in this

area here and there's one other colony about 40

kilometre to the west here and that's all we've

been able to find in the last 5 or 6 years working

with Anangu." Peter Copley

Flannery: "Well this is a beautiful little Waru, this

rock wallaby is an endangered species today, yet

when these fellas were young they were

everywhere through this country, there's so many

species of our marsupials that have suffered the

same fate, 23 of them are extinct and this really is

the last survivor among the middle size mammals

in the whole of this region."Tim Flannery and a Rock

Wallaby

Narration: An important part of the study, is to

document the knowledge of the traditional owners

of the land - and to forge a partnership that will

help to sustain the remaining wildlife.

The invaluable knowledge of the elders is being

recorded, and shared - with the wider world.

Peter Copley

Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources

Copley: "People have come away from a lot of

their country and spent much more time away

from it, as a consequence they haven't been

doing hunting over as broader area of the country,

haven't been using fire for a range of purposes

and because of that the vegetation has got older

post fire and then lightning strikes have taken out

much, much broader areas of country than used

to occur when traditional owners were on their

country and burning in patches to provide a range

of habitats for a big range of animals."

Flannery: "The kind of knowledge that's being

shared here is extraordinarily complex and

detailed and it's been built up over generations by

these Aboriginal people, I guess it's the only way

they've been able to survive in this extraordinarily

harsh land, and we're in the middle of that

process now, us Europeans are trying to adapt to

this same kind of country for the long term, and

the knowledge that's being shared there is

probably our best guide as to how we can do that.

After all these people are the only people who

have ever lived here in the long term."

Narration: In New Zealand, the extinction crisis

has gone much further than in Australia. By the

1970's it was realised that the nation was

perilously close to losing, almost everything.

Among many others on the brink of extinction,

was the flightless night parrot - the Kakapo. Living

in burrows had made it particularly vulnerable to

feral predators. Kakapo

Only 57 survive and most of them are male. Just

one new female has been found in the last twenty

years. Kakapo on nest at night

The last male kakapo boom forlornly, all night, and

every night, in a vain attempt to attract a mate,

that will almost certainly never come.

It was vital to save not just the kakapo, but all the

other remnant populations of native creatures that

were left.

In many cases, they'd only survived on tiny

offshore islands - protected from feral predators,

by the ocean. These islands were of enormous

ecological importance - they were to become life

boats for New Zealands wildlife.

Alycia Warren

Department of Conservation N.Z.

Warren: "We noticed that there were islands that

had species remaining on them that were now no

longer found on the mainland. But often one

island just had one species on it. And by removing

feral animals from islands we were able to bring a

lot of extra species to them. So now we have

quite a few islands that are lifeboats for animals

that are native to New Zealand."

Alycia Warren

Narration: Over the last decade, the entire known

population of Kakapo has been moved to island

lifeboats.

It's hoped that here, in the absence of predators,

the last of the night parrots will breed successfully.

But not all of the 700 offshore islands, were safe -

the rat had already reached many of them, posing

a severe threat.

Systematic poisoning campaigns were waged -

and New Zealand quickly became a world leader,

in controlling feral pests. Something like 70

islands have now been cleared of these

introduced mammals - paving the way for more

and more ambitious species recovery

programmes.

Flannery: "It's pretty clear that New Zealand will

never be able to get rid of all its introduced

predators, but maybe they can be controlled,

especially here on the offshore island lifeboats,

where some native species are down to just a

handful of individuals , and they may be coming

back from the brink, and if that's so it'll be an

amazing conservation achievement."

Narration: The next stage of the 'lifeboats'

programme, is to see whether principles

developed on islands, can be used on the

mainland. Rotoiti National Park, in the mountains

of the South Island, is home to another

endangered parrot - the kaka. Rotoiti was one of

the first mainland 'life boats' to be established.

David Butler

Department of Conservation N.Z.

Butler: "This looks like an intact forest, we're in

the national park here. And the key problems are

the introduced pests found in these forests. So

that's a wide range of mammals, both predators

and herbivores, so we've got possums, rats, mice,

stoats, probably a few feral cats. And then we've

got pests people really aren't thinking of as pests,

the wasp. We have large densities of common

wasps in these forests and you'll see the

honeydew that's on the bark of a number of the

trees here, that provides a very high energy

resource that allows wasps to build up large

numbers in the summer."

Narration: Honeydew is a high-protein, sap-like

liquid, exuded by an insect hidden inside the bark

of trees.

It's a vitally important food - there's hardly a

creature in the forest that doesn't depend on this

energy source to some extent.

But 10 years ago, this vital life support system

was disrupted, when another invader from Europe

arrive here - the common wasp.

With no natural enemies, it was able to breed at

will - filling the forests with it's constant buzzing.It

also preyed in swarms, on the insects - another

vital source of food for birds.

In 1995 it was realised that the breeding cycle of

the kaka, had been disrupted. The wasps, were

thought to be partly to blame. A wasp eradication

programme began, using baits of poison cat food.

Soon the baiting will be tried on a forest-wide

basis. But the other reason for the kakas decline,

was the large number of mammal predators in the

forest.

Alan Saunders

Department of Conservation N.Z.

Sanders: "Unlike true islands, these pest

mammals can re-invade mainland islands easily.

So really the big challenge at mainland island

sites is to control that re-invasion rate of things

like possums and rats and cats and stoats. And

that's really the big challenge which we've yet to

get fully under control."Alan Saunders

Narration: The impact of feral predators was

poignantly demonstrated, when the kaka finally

began to breed again.One pair of birds did

commence mating - an old male had been joined

in the forest by a young female.

Two chicks were born to the pair, and monitoring

of the nest site began. But sadly, it soon became

apparent why the numbers of females had

declined.

Before the chicks had fledged, the young kaka

hen disappeared, and was tracked by radio to an

old log. The guilty party was almost certainly a

stoat. Hens on their nests are sitting targets, it

explained the drastic decline in the numbers of

female birds. This year, close to Rotoiti Lake, the

kaka have been breeding again, and now the

nests have been protected on a forest-wide basis. Stout

Ron Moorhouse

Department of Conservation N.Z.

Moorhouse: "Yeah, so Tim, this is one of our

protected trees here. You see the sheet of

aluminium round the base, which is designed to

prevent stoats climbing the tree. And the

entrances up top and below that you can see a

small patch of aluminium. That's where I've

actually cut a hole to get access to the chicks."

Narration: Conservation field officers make

regular checks on the nest sites - to ensure the

chicks are being properly nurtured. It's a delicate

operation, needing skilled hands.

Alan Saunders

Department of Conservation N.Z.

Saunders: "What we've focussed on really in

mainland island sites recently have been different

suites of introduced mammals and so right here

it's really those mammals, plus the wasps which

are our focus. If we can control, effectively control

those we'll really be starting to talk about real

ecosystem restoration, at the mainland."

Ron Moorhouse

Department of Conservation N.Z.

Moorhouse: To some degree we have to put the

chicks in perspective a bit. A really important thing

is that the female birds haven't been preyed on.

They can always make more chicks, but if you

lose those female birds you can't replace them.

With many of our species extinction can be quite

an insidious almost a surreptitious sort of thing.

The animals are long-lived so they actually

survive a long time so you get the impression that

they're still around. And it's often maybe just a

specific sex or age that's vulnerable to predation.

So in the case of kaka it seems to be primarily

female birds and the young that are vulnerable to

perdition. So you can get the impression there's

still a lot of kaka there, but actually that may be a

heavily male-biased sex-ratio. Flannery: What a

bird, wow.

Flannery: "It's only recently that people have

started to value New Zealands unique

ecosystems. But the challenge to hang onto

what's left is enormous. You just can't undo 800

years ecological damage in a decade, or even a

century. But to make matters worse, the cascade

of changes flowing through this forest now are so

profound, they just have to result in many, many

extinctions."

Narration: The battle to maintain New Zealands

bio-diversity has only just begun.As the people of

New Zealand fight to turn the extinction tide,

Australians are still struggling to come to terms

with the ecological damage, caused by previous

generations.

Australia environmental crisis isn't just about

disappearing wildlife - but the degradation of the

land itself. And it's all because we, the third wave

of future eaters, misunderstood this country from

the very beginning.

The mistakes continued well into the 20th century.

The scramble for wealth drove agriculture ever

onwards - into the more and more marginal land.

This wasn't really farming in the sustainable

sense, it was more like mining the soil. The few

nutrients that had sustained this ecosystem for

thousands of years, were used up by just a few

crops of wheat - and then the land was ruined.

Our rivers too came under attack. When it began

in 1949, the Snowy Mountains Scheme was one

of the engineering wonders of the world. Australia

was driven by a vision of becoming another

America, a nation of hundreds of millions - feeding

the world. Controlling the unpredictable cycle of

drought and flood, was thought to be the key.

Today so much of the Murray river's water is used

for irrigation, that only a third of it's flow ever

reaches the sea.

The Murray Darling system was the life line for

over 30,000 wetland areas, that depended upon

it's cycle of drought and flood. The rivers waters

were once rich in native fish - but today the

Murray cod, Australia's largest fresh water

species, is already extinct in large tracts of the

river.

Dead gum trees and carp The wetlands

ecosystems are dying - from either being

permanently dry or constantly full of water, that

drowns the majestic river red gums. The powerful

technology of the third wave of future eaters did

eventually make the land yield. And Australians

won a lucrative bounty from wool and wheat. But

the cost has been enormous. Once the native

trees were cleared the water table rose, bringing

salt to the surface - rendering the land useless.

And every time the drought returns, more and

more of the precious topsoil is blown off the land.

Millions of tons are lost to erosion every year. In

1983, a dust storm enveloped Melbourne,

plunging the city into twilight. In just one afternoon

Australia lost 4 million dollars in nutrients alone -

blown away forever across the Tasman Sea.

The same winds that blow away the soil, fan the

bushfires that rage on edge of our cities - plunging

whole communities into crisis. And these

bushfires too are a man made catastrophe - the

legacy of leaving the land unmanaged by the

Aborigines - for the firestick was extinguished

here over 200 years ago.

Flannery: "It looks to me like we're not in control

here, in fact us Europeans never have been,

because we still haven't learnt how to live with this

country, we've tried to transplant a foreign heart

into a different body and we're seeing all the signs

of a massive rejection, and if we keep on trying to

treat our country like this and keep on trying to

ride it so hard we're going to kill it and that's what

I mean by future eating. "

Narration: So far we've been making a living at

the country's expense. But it doesn't have to be

like this. Branding Cattle

Now one in every 3 farmers, 24,000 of them

belong to Landcare, they're committed to making

a living here sustainably.

They're doing it by observing their country

carefully - studying the fine detail of how it works.

Out here, on the edge of the Simpson desert - hard

experience has taught graziers not to be greedy - to

move their cattle on at the first sign of pasture

degradation - for it's all too easy to overstock this land.

The artesian water here comes to the surface under

great pressure.

At Dalkanina Station, Daryl Bell is actually using

the water to minimise the impact of his cattle on

the land.He pipes the underground water to

storage tanks, placed in areas of good growth.

The water keeps the cattle in an area that can

sustain them. At the first sign their food is being

depleted - another tank is activated - and the

cattle moved on - leaving the land to recover.

Daryl Bell

Dulkanina Station, South Australia

Bell: "I think one of our major secrets in the whole

lot is the invention of poly pipe and polythene

tanks and fibre glass tanks you can move stock

on little lots of water and they can sustain there

for a long, long time left alone. It's all the more

remarkable because he's doing it in one of the

driest places on earth that supports a pastoral

industry."

Flannery: "I guess you must get a lot of people

who come out here and look at this country and

say gee it looks pretty hard I don't know how you

do it. "

Bell: "Yes well I suppose well we are on the edge

of a desert but er it's er very robust but at the

same time very fragile, but it's more robust than a

lot of people give it credit for, but you gotta be

kind to it and it'll be kind to you, but you abuse it,

it'll break ya. "

Daryl Bell

Narration: Much of Australia is rangelands,

unsuitable for growing crops, but ideal for meat

production. Kangaroos and emus are the only

large land animals that are perfectly adapted to

this country. Both have the potential to be

harvested sustainably and profitably over vast

areas of the continent - and they taste good too.

Flannery: "It's cost our environment nothing to

produce this kangaroo steak, but the cost of

making this loaf of bread has been enormous..

We loose 7 kilograms of irreplaceable soil for

every kilogram of wheat we grow here, and it's no

exaggeration to say that what we eat today will

shape our country's future. We can either

continue to eat at our country's expense or we

can find ways to feed ourselves that's in tune with

it's nature."

Narration: The salt-water crocodile has been

here for at least 4 million years. Now in the

Northern Territory, people are beginning to raise

crocodiles for meat and skins - turning the tables

from crocodiles eating us - to us eating them. As

Graham Webb argues, there's both a

conservation and economic logic to farming and

eating these creatures.

Graham Webb

Crocodylus Park, Darwin

Webb: "It's just very simple, any animal or plant

you want to look at. If it has a high value, either

for skin, meat, or just because it's beautiful,

people will look after it. If it has a low or a

negative value, if it's eating your cattle or eating

your sheep or something like that, then you pay

money to get rid of it. If it has no tangible value

then it's very easily replaced. And that's the

problem with wildlife conservation on a global

scale. People are frightened to put a value on. But

if it doesn't have a value it's going to be replaced.

"

Graham Webb

Narration: It's not just our wildlife that needs to be

valued - water is the other great natural resource

that we've been literally giving away. It's been

squandered to create enormous wealth for few -

and until we put a true economic value on water, it

will never be managed sustainably. More than

anything else, our future lies in how we manage

this land.

Kakadu National Park is one of Australia's premier

world heritage areas. It's complex ecology of

wetlands, rainforest and grasslands, has been

managed by the Aborigines alone - for the last

40,000 years.

Greg Miles

Kakadu National Park

Miles: "Aboriginal people have been burning this

place for more generations than you can count. In

fact much of what you see around in terms of the

vegetation and the landscape has been sculpted

by fire. It's a product of fire and it's necessary for

us in partnership with the Aboriginal people to

maintain that to maintain the status quo because

if we don't, if we become shy of fire, the way

people perhaps are in southern Australia we're

going to have a pyrotechnic anarchy develop in

this country which would probably result in really

severe late season hot fires in the late dry season

which are very destructive. " Aborigine starts fire

Narration: Despite all that's happened to them,

Aboriginal knowledge of how to manage this land

with fire, has survived. Now it's being applied,

using modern technology. The traditional rubbing

together of sticks, has been replaced by

incendiary capsules - thrown from the air. The

idea is to burn on a controlled, but widespread

basis, in order to prevent destructive hot bushfires

triggered by lightning in the dry season - the

firestick has been revived, on a grand scale.

Miles: "What we do is use technology to mimic

what they used to do. So with the aid of satellite

imagery, helicopters, incendiary capsules and a

whole range of other things, quad motorbikes -

you name it. We use all these high tech methods

to achieve the same result that Aboriginal people

got by doing it with banksia cones and walking on

foot maybe fifty or hundred years ago right back

into the far distant past. "

Narration: One thing is certain though, neither

Australia nor New Zealand can build a sustainable

future, without the support of their people.

A trip to one of the latest of New Zealands island

lifeboats, shows just how far the public is behind

this national conservation programme. Just a few

kilometres offshore from Auckland, lies the island

of Tiritiri Matanga. It looks green now, but ten

years ago it was barren, overgrazed pastureland,

given over to goats. Today, the island is almost

entirely covered in forest again, and is being used

as a lifeboat sanctuary for rare birds like the

flightless takahe. The transformation has been

achieved mostly by volunteers - over a hundred or

so of whom appear every weekend, joined by

boatloads of children in their holidays. Over a

hundred thousand native trees have already been

planted.

If real results are to be achieved, and wastelands

turned back into forest again, the wholesale

support of communities is essential, on both a

national and a local scale. Eventually the new

forest will grow to resemble this, the last relic of

pristine forest left on the island - its canopy alive

once again with the sound of native birds.

Flannery: "Well what an incredibly beautiful

place, you can just hear the health of the

ecosystem in all these birds that are mostly gone

from New Zealand forests, and just 10 years ago

most of this island was just pasture. I'm just

amazed what people can do when the whole

community works together pretty single mindedly

to restore something like this."

Narration: In reality, it's all too easy for urban

people, to forget about environmental problems -

like species loss, and the degradation of soil and

water.But, it's the cities where most people live

and ultimately they will decide the future of this

land. Urban people especially need to assess

their life styles - and decide what kind of

consumption levels are sustainable in these

lands.

What level of population can be supported, and

how much of our unique natural heritage can be

retained. Each wave of human invaders into this

region has changed its very nature, but eventually

they've learnt to live sustainably in these fragile

lands.

Except that is - for us, the third and final wave of

the future eaters.

Flannery: "My people came ashore at this place

just over 200 years ago, and ever since then they

have been acting as if they never left Europe. Well

the time has come now for us to become real

Australasians, to learn to respect the uniqueness

of these most fragile of lands and to live within

their limits, and to let their rhythms, their richness

and grandeur sit easily in our spirits."