Carvers put art to work for godwits

By SIMON COLLINS in KOREA

Godwits which migrate between New Zealand and Asia every year have inspired a group of Maori carvers to join a Korean bid to save one of the birds' main staging posts.

The Wellington group, Nga Maramara a Rua, has created 11 carvings that will be placed in the Saemangeum tidal flats next to the Byeonsan Peninsula National Park on South Korea's west coast.

The 40,000ha mudflats are a feeding ground for about 200,000 birds as they migrate between Siberia and Australasia each year.

The birds are among several breeds that fly to New Zealand each year to escape the Northern Hemisphere winter.

The South Korean Government is building a 33km seawall to enclose the flats and the two estuaries that feed them. They will be drained to create 28,300ha of farmland and 11,800ha of freshwater lakes.

The Government says the extra land is needed to feed South Korea's 47 million people, who live in an area smaller than the North Island, and where 70 per cent of the land is too mountainous to cultivate.

But the Korean Federation for Environmental Movements is fighting to stop the reclamation and save both the birds and the fish they eat.

The five New Zealand carvers walked through the mudflats last week with local people who make their living from plucking shellfish out of knee-deep mud, in the same way that their ancestors have done for centuries.

"These people depend on the shellfish," said carver Paki Wilson.

"They used to just walk out from their houses and find the shellfish. Now they have to walk 7km to get out far enough to find them."

Takirirangi Smith, who teaches the four other carvers at Porirua's Whitireia Polytechnic, made the initial connection with Korea when he was invited to an international symposium on indigenous land issues in Seoul two years ago.

Last year he invited two Korean environmentalists to a symposium in Wellington on art and the environment.

When they told him about the threat to the godwits at Saemangeum, he contacted Te Aupouri, the iwi of the Far North where the godwits (kuaka) arrive around September each year and leave around March.

"The bird is considered so important to Te Aupouri that when an exhibition about their people was held at Te Papa, they chose to use a proverb relating to this bird as their theme," Mr Smith said.



Te Aupouri and other groups supported the idea of sending Nga Maramara a Rua to Korea to endorse the campaign against the Saemangeum reclamation.

The carvers have created works representing their Maori ancestors who protect birds and the environment, other ancestors who created the birds, and the birds and fish themselves.

Last Sunday, as they worked on their carvings in the fashionable Seoul shopping street of Insa-dong, 900 people signed a petition against the reclamation.

Photographs and stories about them appeared on Monday in three Korean newspapers with a combined circulation of more than 3 million.

On Tuesday, they met two MPs who oppose the reclamation: the chairman of the national defence committee, Chang Young-dal of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, and Kim Won-wung of the opposition Grand National Party.

Afterwards, Mr Kim said the Government had agreed to keep the mudflats in one of the two estuaries that feed into the Saemangeum area.

However, so much had been spent on the retaining walls that it was impossible to stop the whole reclamation.











Meanwhile, thousands of members of another family of godwits are settling in on New Zealand shores after a 10,000km, 12-day non-stop flight from Alaska.



The bar-tailed godwits are among about 250,000 shorebirds that fly to New Zealand each summer.

In Miranda, a shorebird mecca on the west coast of the Firth of Thames, a variety of birds have been arriving daily since September.

For many, like the brown and grey godwits, it has been a long and tiring trip.

Carol Whiddett, a volunteer at the Miranda Shorebird Centre, said the godwits were believed to fly directly to New Zealand from Alaska.



Another common migrant at Miranda is the red knot, a small speckled Siberian bird that flies in via Asia and Australia.









In March, when the weather starts to cool, the godwits and red knots will return home for another breeding season.



A welcoming ceremony for the birds is being held at the Miranda Shorebird Centre tomorrow.

- additional reporting: Elizabeth Binning