Vandalism and neglect wiping out Maori art

A replica of a Chatham Islands carving. Picture / Richard Robinson

Some of New Zealand's oldest art, painted by early Maori on caves and rock outcrops, is disappearing thanks to years of vandalism and neglect.

Several hundred little-known rock drawings and carvings have been identified from the Far North to Southland and in the Chatham Islands, where there are also unique carvings of human figures on living trees.

But most of the 1400 tree carvings identified in the 1950s have been lost, some of the best rock art has been drowned by hydro power schemes and much of the rest is decaying because of weather, vegetation, animals and people.

Retired Auckland University educationists Peter and Pamela Russell, in a paper for an Archaeological Association conference, said New Zealand was losing "a national treasure".

They said carvings in a sea cave near Whangamata were being ruined by graffiti, cliff drawings at Ongare near Tauranga had been destroyed by sea erosion and an axe attack, and a historic painted shelter at Aratiatia near Taupo had collapsed into the Waikato River.

The Archaeological Association wants action to save a site described as the most spectacular in the North Island, near Murupara, east of Rotorua.

Moss, lichen and fern are growing over the soft rock at that site in the Kaingaroa Forest, damaging fragile carvings of 40 canoes.

"The rock face should be treated with herbicide, the dampness reduced, and a car park and access track provided," the Russells said.

The Historic Places Trust's senior archaeologist, Dr Rick McGovern-Wilson, said no active work had been done on the site since the Department of Conservation stopped managing it after the law was changed to restrict the department's work to its own land in 1996.

"DoC has now washed their hands of that site and it currently lies in limbo," he said.

"DoC were managing the site under an agreement but for some reason, two years ago, the area manager in Murupara decided to offload it. Our office in Rotorua received keys to the padlock in the mail and a phone message saying, 'Next time you're coming through Murupara, pick up the files'."

DoC area manager John Sutton said preserving historic sites that were not on conservation land was now the Historic Places Trust's responsibility.

But Dr McGovern-Wilson said the trust was not funded to actively protect rock art. "We have concerns that there are situations that are known but are not effectively protected, but we can only advocate to the landowners to try to protect them."

The Kaingaroa land is owned by the Crown but the cutting rights were bought last year by an investment company owned by America's Harvard University and are managed for it by Kaingaroa Timberlands.

Its community relations manager, Henry Colbert, said the rock art was protected by a fence, but its decay was "a natural process. There is no way you can stop the weather coming down the rock face."