Instead of paraphrasing in my own words from what I heard during the Walk Talk Tour, let me quote the history from Zealandia's website.
Less than 1,000 years ago everything changed. Animals were hunted to extinction. Forests were burned and felled. Wetlands were drained and grasslands were grazed and ploughed. Successive waves of settlers brought with them a range of new animals and plants that quickly became pests. The unique wildlife of Zealandia started to vanish.
In response to this catastrophic loss, the world’s first fully-fenced urban wildlife sanctuary was born. With an extraordinary 500-year vision to turn back the clock as closely as possible to the day before humans arrived...
So the main goal is, to return nature to pre-human time. I heard that over and over, from both guides. All the way along the paved and also muddy path, through every rustle of leaf, through every motion of legs, on the ground, in the trees, I couldn't cease to be impressed by the passion and the effort of the people of New Zealand to bring up Zealandia. At the same time, providing people to enjoy real life of nature -- before human -- for real. When I first visited KL Bird Park, I was supper thrilled to experience birds in all color flying over and around me, freely. However, there was a mess high high above. Here, in Zealandia, the sky is the bird's only limit. Plus! I am not anywhere high above in the mountains. I am in the city. A metropolitan city. A capital city. For who has spent more than half her life in Jakarta, this feels weird. |
| Kereru or Wood Pigeon. |
Pigeons, pigeons, pigeons. I love them. I take pictures of them, everywhere I go. But! I never knew pigeons produce milk until I read this. By the way, it is said also, Wood Pigeon is the largest living pigeon species in the world (550 to 850 g).
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| Pateke? Seeming so. |
The lake was so wide that the rare native duck half the size of a mallard became even smaller.
Later that night, when I took the Night Tour, this sky was sparkling with stars all over
from edge to edge.
All trees native to New Zealand, I was told, don't loose leaves in winter. |
| Except for one: Tree Fuchsia or Kotukutuku, One of the only New Zealand trees to drop its leaves in autumn |
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| Black tree fern. The Maori name sounds funny to me: Mamaku. |
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| The path during my self-guided trek... |
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| And then, I got lost. |
This was an attempt to capture sun ray using my smartphone for the most thing I feared was the sun going down before I could find my way back. Cause of getting lost:
- Avoiding steep narrow slippery slopes. (Apparently, the right path was the narrow one.)
- Desiring a different route for the way back, so I could absorb more. (Got too much.)
- Poor map-reading ability. (Instead of blaming the map.)
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