Bringing the past into our future—using historic data to inform contemporary freshwater management

Knowledge of landscapes, and how landscapes were utilised by Ngāi Tahu, helps provide a context within which to examine the contemporary aspirations of Ngāi Tahu with respect to resource management. Using the Waitaki catchment as a case study, it describes how to weave together strands of Ngāi Tahu history from a variety of sources to guide contemporary resource management. One of the greatest challenges, however, is determining appropriate management goals and, in particular, restoration goals. Understanding sites as they existed at the time of European settlement can be extremely difficult due the nature and extent of modification in subsequent decades. Restoring a degraded area to match some pre-existing condition, such as pre-European settlement, which is often the goal of restoration initiatives, is difficult unless data on historic conditions are available. We describe how to piece together historic patterns of activity within the catchment, and the forces that have been instrumental in changing it, thus providing a framework upon which resource management goals can be developed.