Under The Microscope

A LIVING NEW ZEALAND FOREST, by Robert Brockie; David Bateman; 172 pages;

Now this is a book about ecology.

In brief, Brockie provides a fascinating and readable account of some of the things that have been learnt in the DSIR's twenty five years of study of the Orongorongo Valley, near Wellington. Although the data is derived from a small area, the findings are generally relevant to other parts of the country.

From the underlying geography, to what grows where and who eats whom, this book brovides a wealth of detail about the ecosystem of "one of the most intensively studied forest communities anywhere in the world".

And what the book emphasises is that the forest is a community. It shows the interactions between climate, geography, flora and fauna that all go to make the forest what it is today. 25 years of work produce a lot of detail -- the movements and home ranges of mice are mapped, the popularity of different creepy-crawlies as bird food graphed, the altitudinal limits of prominent plant species carefully analysed. Even the amount of sea-salt deposited by storms comes into consideration.

One thing that comes through very strongly is the environnmental terrorism of the possum population. By decimating their favoured food plants they radically alter the composition of the forest plant community, and they severely reduce the food available for many native bird species. If New Zealand has a Public Enemy Number One, it's probably this cute, furry, round-eyed marsupial.

The books's not perfect but quibbles are minor -- an uninterpretable graph concerning possum breeding, for example. On the whole, it seems fair to say that if you're interested in the New Zealand environment, you need this book. It not only looks great on the coffee table, it's a good example of well-indexed, well-referenced science for the layman.