Tara Ward talks to the conservationist and Endangered Species Aotearoa co-presenter about hills, hope and how to save the planet.
Nicola Toki is deep in the Fiordland bush, looking for the heaviest parrot in the world. It’s episode two of the new season of Endangered Species Aotearoa, and the dedicated conservationist trudges beside comedian Pax Assadi through ankle-deep mud and dense forest. After an intrepid tramp through untouched terrain, a Department of Conservation ranger announces that their transmitter has finally located one of the iconic kākāpō – but it’s at the top of a steep hill with the ominous name of “Elevator”.
The news makes Assadi’s mouth drop in horror. Toki looks quietly at her feet. “Please tell me it’s called ‘elevator’ because there’s an actual elevator,” pleads Assadi, but it’s to no avail. Toki and Assadi begin the arduous ascent up the cliff face, but when the ranger finally locates Patawa the kākāpō, the mood instantly lifts. “I can see it!” Assadi whispers. “I”m actually crying,” a visibly emotional Toki replies. Joining the celebration are three rare kākā who suddenly appear in the trees above, called over by the screech of the magnificent kākāpō.
It’s a magical moment, just one of many in the nature documentary series that celebrates and educates about New Zealand’s most vulnerable and threatened creatures. Even months later, in a chat over Zoom, Toki reveals that while she’s seen kākāpo and many other endangered native animals before, the joy and wonder of witnessing these unique creatures in their natural habitat never diminishes. “I’ve seen hundreds of kiwi, and every time I see a kiwi, I’m still going to cry.”
Toki’s love of the natural world began early. As a child growing up in Southland, her parents took her camping and fishing in her Nana’s 1975 Sprite poptop camper, and she spent a lot of time at her grandmother’s farm at Waimahaka. There, she’d play in the native bush that her grandmother refused to clear, swinging on vines and calling the pīwakawaka down. Those formative experiences gave Toki a fierce appreciation for the world around her. “I had the privilege of interacting with nature and a family that wanted to foster that,” she says. “I guess I just never lost it.”
Her family moved around Te Waipounamu after her father – originally a fitter welder at Tiwai Point – decided to follow his dream of becoming a ski plane pilot. They ended up living in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park, and it’s no accident that the first episode of Endangered Species Aotearoa was filmed there. “I fought really hard for that,” Toki reveals, knowing the mountainous landscape would be an incredible character to launch the series. “The team got there, and they were like, ‘whoa’.”
Returning to Aoraki for a TV show was a full circle moment to Toki, who studied zoology at the University of Otago and later, a postgraduate diploma in natural history, filmmaking and communication. The course was a partnership with Natural History New Zealand, and Toki was taught by the likes of Peter Hayden, Rod Morris and Paul Donovan, all of whom she had watched on homegrown nature TV shows every Sunday night.
Here, she learned the power of storytelling, a skill that would prove invaluable through her career in conservation advocacy. After working as a camera operator at Dunedin’s Channel 9 and as an intern at Tūhura Otago Museum, Toki joined the department of conservation and began talking nature on shows like Good Morning and Meet the Locals. Toki’s Critter of the Week segment on RNZ now attracts 100,000 listeners every week, and inspired the publication of her children’s book Critters of Aotearoa.
Toki says that storytelling is at the heart of Endangered Species Aotearoa too, and she has a knack for communicating facts and information with enthusiasm and warmth. The series doesn’t deny that our natural world is in trouble, but Toki knows from experience that a call to action is far more powerful than doom and despair. “I’ve long believed in telling stories that say, ‘have a look at this thing, it’s really amazing. It’s actually in trouble, but when you do this and this, you can turn it around’,” she says.
That feeling of hope is something Toki was mindful of every time she stepped in front of the camera. “Otherwise, we’d just be making a series about filming animals into extinction, and nobody wants that.”
These days, when she’s not clambering up cliffs or sitting in swamps for Endangered Species Aotearoa, Toki lives in Canterbury and works as chief executive of Forest and Bird (or “Twig and Tweet”, as she calls it). Forest and Bird was established a century ago as an independent organisation to act as nature’s voice in New Zealand, with staff and volunteers across the motu working on a variety of community and landscape environmental projects. Regardless of who is in government, Toki says the organisation always wants to work together to find solutions for environmental issues.
That said, Toki adds that the current government’s focus on growth at any cost has been challenging to work with. The coalition government has introduced the Fast Track Approval Bill, announced unambitious climate targets, proposed new mines on conservation land, refused to ban deep sea trawling and cut funding to a myriad of climate-related programmes. It’s a destructive approach that makes no sense to Toki. “It feels like nature is cancelled,” she says. “We have an asset that delivers income to New Zealand, and that’s our natural world. People aren’t coming here to see shopping malls.”
She knows better than most how critical things are, rattling off fact after fact about the perilous state of our natural environment. New Zealand currently has 4,000 threatened species, with 900 of those “on the edge of a cliff”. We also have the highest extinction rate of any country, and the highest proportion of threatened species anywhere on the planet. She adds that the Department of Conservation is expected to protect all of our native creatures, while also eradicating pests and maintaining a visitor network of thousands of kilometres – all on a “disgraceful” budget that’s “significantly less” than that of the Christchurch City Council.
Toki says she wants a different “prosperity mindset” from the government, one that prioritises and protects our natural environment for centuries to come. “Short term, irreversible destruction of things that belong to New Zealanders who might not come for another few generations, is theft, right?” she says. “We’re stealing from our grandkids, and I don’t believe that governments have the right or the mandate to do that.”
That’s where Endangered Species Aotearoa comes in. The documentary series uses humour and heart to make New Zealand fall in love with nature, with enthusiastic “bird nerd” Toki providing the perfect foil to Assadi’s reluctant city boy adventurer. Despite not knowing each other before the show, Toki says she and Assadi quickly hit it off – although they fought “like brother and sister” through season one. “We’re on more of an even keel now,” she says. “Pax gets it, he’s fallen in love with nature.”
Whether they’re being chased by fur seals on the Kaikōura coast or searching for black coral in Fiordland, the logistics of filming in some of New Zealand’s most remote places isn’t easy. Shoot days are long and tiring, with the crew lugging 30 kilos of camera gear across oceans, up mountains and through forests. After climbing up Mount Heale and Mount Hobson in the Hauraki Gulf episode, Toki suffered achilles problems for months, while an upcoming episode captures her sitting in a state of exhaustion after wading through a swamp in search of some elusive Australasian bitterns – “the hardest thing any of us filmed, ever”.
Like those tricky little bitterns, endangered creatures don’t give two hoots about the production schedule of a TV show, and the unpredictability of locating these animals can be challenging. In season one, Toki and the team spent several days on Rakiura looking for hoihō, and were filming their sad goodbyes when two penguins simply waddled up on the beach in front of them. This season, a trip to Fiji in search of mantra rays proved fruitless until the moment Toki’s bags were packed. “We were waiting for the boat to collect us, and they saw one,” she recalls. “Next thing it was like, ‘right, tools down, cameras out, let’s go!’”
Toki hopes the series will help to “flip the switch” and encourage New Zealanders to connect with and protect their local natural wildlife. She’s a firm believer that if we don’t know what we’re at risk of losing, it’s hard to care, and Endangered Species Aotearoa is a timely reminder that New Zealand’s identity is built on its relationship with nature. “New Zealanders have this intrinsic connection to our natural world that is unlike any other country,” she says. “For New Zealanders, nature is our church. It’s our sense of spiritual connection, our sense of self.”
Toki is hopeful for a third season of Endangered Species Aotearoa – though next time, she reckons she’ll try to be a little fitter to conquer those never-ending hills. As she wraps up our Zoom call to collect flies for her son’s pet frog, she says it’s a privilege to tell the stories of New Zealand’s endangered creatures, and she’s proud of the way the show has pushed her out of her comfort zone. “It is not easy to be in togs or a wetsuit at this age and stage of my life on primetime television, or sweating my way up a hill somewhere,” she says.
“But I’ll do it for the nature, and I’ll do it for the people who love the nature.”
Endangered Species Aotearoa screens on Mondays at 7.30pm on TVNZ1 and streams on TVNZ+.
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