Dr. Colin Meurk: led restoration of Christchurch’s last wetland.

Could New Zealand ever be the happiest nation on earth for insects, mushrooms, plants, and animals — as well as people? I’m curious as to the answer, because down here in the less-populated South Island, you get overwhelmed by the presence of nature: especially in this wetland, which has survived a century of developers’ swamp-draining. You stand amidst a rising table of water splashing with grateful ducks, swans, fish, migrating birds in here for some R&R, and families walking trails among trees. It’s winter-cold but beautiful, in a dripping sort of way. According to Dr. Colin Meurk, it’s more like the traditional New Zealand, as it looked before Europeans and even the Maori arrived here. Only difference is, no giant (12-foot high) Moa birds or Moa-hunting Haast’s Eagles with their 10-foot wingspans. Moas and Haast’s Eagles are officially extinct.

But, I wonder, how is life for creepy-crawlies like weta, and for rivers that have been squeezed by farmland extension and deeply polluted by fertilizers? How is it for “nuisance” imports like Australian possums, pigs, and the much-hunted deer? (I suspect that, apart from the “being hunted” part, these animals have found a little paradise.) Also, I want to know why nobody in traditional happiness surveys takes plant, insect, and animal happiness into consideration. New Zealand was ranked the world’s 11th-happiest place for people in 2024 (the U.S. is 23rd-happiest). But again, how about the rest of life?

Turns out this is something Dr. Meurk wants to know, too. The question came up last night, while I sat in his favorite Christchurch pub, the Volstead Trading Company, with half a dozen of his wildlife expert buddies. He’s chair of something called the New Zealand Biodiversity Recording Network. He’s also a whole lot more: a professor, and a fighter for biodiversity in the ancient forests and fauna of this long-isolated land. He fights developers, but interestingly, he also fights for the “ecological integrity of the city.” He wants every townie to live no more than 200 yards from a miniature forest. We sit, wrapping our fingers around warm mid-winter mulled wine on this freezing evening (yes it’s mid-winter here), talking about how he’s trying to help native Kiwi wildlife take back its rightful place in the face of urbanization. “Come out to the marshes tomorrow morning,” he says. “I’ll show you what we’re doing.”

So yeah, next morning we’re out on what looks like an endless ancient marsh, stretching to New Zealand’s snow-capped Southern Alps: The Travis Wetland. This is Meurk’s baby. He fought long and hard against developers who wanted to create yet another sea of housing, and won. (Luckily! After, a second Christchurch earthquake, water levels rose so much, all that housing would have been submerged.) Instead we’re looking at a scene Dr. Meurk says may not have changed for a thousand years. In front of us, pukeko swamp hens, black swans, friendly local short-finned eels, and native ducks like the wildly-colored Paradise shelduck puddle around us. Meurk wants this place to be for these creatures, and only then for us humans.

The Travis Wetlands outside Christchurch New Zealand, unchanged for 1000 years?

Not so New Zealand’s new government. Two words recently galvanized New Zealand’s preservation community: “Goodbye Freddie.” Conservative Resources Minister Shane Jones spoke up for prioritizing mining over nature. “If there is a mining opportunity, and it’s impeded by a blind frog,” he said in a speech, “goodbye Freddie.” The speech brought a huge response. “The minister completely didn’t understand that our native frogs are the most significant frogs in the world,” says Dr. Meurk. “They are the most ancient type of frog. They are ancestral to all other frogs on the planet. They go back to the Jurassic era.” (About 150 million years.)

To help save that ancient amphibian, Archey’s Frog, Meurk spawned the very New Zealand idea of creating what he calls “mainland islands,” fenced eco-sanctuaries that shut in native flora and fauna and shut out exotic imported mammals like pigs, goats, possums, and deer. “New Zealand drifted away from Gondwana before any mammals evolved,” says Meurk. “This is a critical difference from just about everywhere else in the world, and creates marvelous creatures with enormous vulnerabilities. Our native plants and animals have zero defenses against imported mammals. You’ve got to provide complete exclusional protection in order to enable some of the most vulnerable species to survive. But also we must enable people to directly interact with native plants and creatures like the kiwi. Because if people are not witnessing that direct connection — and they haven’t for some generations — then they suffer from what is called ‘extinction of experience.’ And extinction of experience leads to extinction of species. Because if you no longer see your natural, original, authentic living nature, it becomes non-existent in your brain. So you don’t identify with it. You identify instead with what’s familiar in your surroundings.”

By that criterion, if plants and animals are going to be happy, it’s here that they’ll probably be happiest, from the Totara seedlings Meurk’s volunteers are planting this Saturday morning, to the 1000-year-old adult Totara trees towering beyond. This, you know, is a different country, less touched in some ways than any in the world — but maybe on its way to being touched up to become a second Gondwanaland.