Sam Gibson is campaigning for a seat on the Gisborne District Council. Photo / Supplied
Kiwi conservationist Sam “The Trap Man” Gibson has opened up on how going bush as a teenager gave him the “storyline” to break out of a self-destructive party lifestyle.
Gibson, whose newly released TVNZ documentary Think Like a Forest promotes the restoration of Aotearoa’s indigenous forest, has also recently announced a run for the Gisborne District Council on a platform of “resilient landscapes, businesses and communities”.
But while now a highly-regarded community leader, Gibson told Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan that things could’ve been different if not for the intervention of people close to him as a teen.
“I moved from Gisborne to Hawke’s Bay when I was 12 with my parents, and you take this young fella who’s used to rural Gisborne to the busy city of Hawke’s Bay, and they plonked me in the bogan surfing community.
“Those guys partied really hard, and so that was the social scene I got put in – I was a surfer. I’m really lucky to have had people that saw what trajectory I was going down and gave me some opportunities and gave me the storyline to get me out of that.”
With the blessing of his principal and parents, those opportunities consisted of regular week-long trips into the bush instead of school – an environment Gibson struggled in – to live with “some amazing trampers”.
“They’d send me bush in the middle of every term up to Te Urewera… Those [trampers] taught me about my place in the world in relation to trees and plants and how I could contribute to these ecosystems that looked after me, and I just haven’t looked back,” he recalled.
“It’s somewhere where I could work hard, but it’s also somewhere I could contribute to and somewhere that looked after me. I just found my place…
“I feel like when we put young people out into the bush, after a whole day, they start to light up and they start to thrive.”
Gibson told Real Life the bush has always felt like home to him, even from a very young age, with a strong connection to the whenua nurtured while he was growing up in Gisborne.
“I’ve got incredible grandparents who all took me in the bush, and great parents and uncles and aunties,” he said.
“My parents were kind of alternative characters when I was young. Dad was a tramper and both of them climbed to Everest Base Camp, so they were quite adventurous people.
“Dad would take me into the bush and tramping and whitewater rafting, and Mum would make all our food from scratch. She’d bake all our own bread and biscuits and had a big māra kai (food garden), so quite wholesome people.
“We lived in this not really cash-rich environment, but this really loved and nurtured environment that was connected to the land.”
Having channelled his love of nature into his work life, Gibson’s career has taken two recent unexpected turns – into politics, with his council election campaign; and show business, with his recent doco.
“I never really intended to get into politics at all, but when you get shoulder-tapped by the aunties, I guess you do what you’re told, hey!” he told Cowan.
Gibson says feedback suggests viewers are loving Think Like a Forest.
“We’re seeing a big reaction with climate change; we’re seeing the 90-year data showing that we’re going to experience more intense rainfall events and more fire – and we just really wanted to make a case for putting trees in the right places in our landscape,” he said.
“And that’s what the documentary is all about. It’s who these trees are and what mechanisms we need to really build in some resilience for the future.”
The documentary is part of a proposal they took to Parliament called Recloaking Papatūānuku, providing evidence that over 100 years it works out cheaper to restore native forests than it is to buy offshore carbon credits.
“Currently, we’re investing our hard-earned New Zealand dollars in international markets to supply carbon credits for us here, but if we invested that money at home over a 100-year period, it would work out much cheaper.
“But it will require our politicians to start thinking longer than a single term.”
However, Gibson told Cowan that perspectives among the general public are shifting.
“Our farmers and even our forestry companies are starting to transition pine forests into native forests because they see the big picture. So I think we’re already doing it. I just think the Government has a little bit of catching up to do.”