Stephen King (conservationist)

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use New Zealand English Template:Infobox person Stephen Tamatea King (born 1952/1953) is a New Zealand botanist and conservationist, known for his barefoot campaigns to protect native forests.

King gained national prominence in 1978 for his campaigns to protect native forests from logging, after leading the world's first treesitting protest on an ancient tōtara tree.<ref name="NZ Geo" /> He went on to serve as chairman of the Native Forest Restoration Trust, which he helped establish in 1980.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="NFRT" />

Early life and education

King was born in 1952 or 1953 and was the third oldest of 12 children. He grew up in Te Aroha, before the family moved to Northcote, Auckland, in 1960. His father fostered his love of nature from a young age, and as an early teenager he earned himself the nickname "nature boy".<ref name="KC"/>

King attended Westlake Boys' High School. At 15, he became a registered nurseryman, propagating native plants from seeds and recording their growth in detailed notes. In his late teens, he began receiving invitations from other schools to speak to students about conservation. In 1970, at 17, he won the inaugural Young Conservator of the Year award.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="KC"/>

After high school, King studied horticulture at Massey University for two years, before dropping out to study at Bible College in Christchurch. Six months later, King was expelled from the college for refusing to wear shoes.<ref name="KC"/>

King left Christchurch, and walked barefoot to the top of the South Island, crossed the Cook Strait via ferry, and then walked as far as Ōtaki, before hitchhiking the rest of his way back to Auckland.<ref name="KC"/>

Conservation work

In 1971, the government, led by prime minister Robert Muldoon, proposed to mill significant areas of native beech forests, and replace it with non-native Pinus radiata.<ref name="TA EA"/> King served as the Auckland branch chairperson at the Native Forest Action Council (NAFC).<ref name="KC"/> In 1975, the NAFC began a petition, titled the Maruia Declaration, to demand legal protection for native forests.<ref name="TA EA"/> King led a team of campaigners in Auckland, door-knocking every home in Muldoon's electorate to collect signatures for the petition.<ref name="KC"/> The petition obtained 341,000 signatures and was submitted to parliament in 1977, resulting in protections for native forests in the West Coast.<ref name="NZ Geo"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

King made headlines in 1978, as part of a group of protesters that spent a week staying on a tōtara tree, in protest of the felling of thousand-year old trees in what is now the Pureora Forest Park.<ref name="Te ara"/><ref name="NZ Geo"/><ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On 18 January the protesters started climbing and occupying trees following an anti-logging protest involving a hundred people, and after logging was suspended on 21 January for safety reasons, an indefinite hold was placed on 24 January. A full logging ban was introduced three years later.<ref name=":2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="NFRT"/>

Following the protest, King and Shirley Guildford, another protester, devised a plan to renew the native forest; the Forestry Service agreed to make a failed pine plantation in Pureora available to them to experiment with. They set up a nursery and began propagating seeds from tōtara, kahikatea and matai trees.<ref name="NFRT"/> In 1980, they established the Native Forest Restoration Trust, with support from Sir Edmund Hillary as its patron.<ref name=":1" /> By 1981, the trust had collected over a million seeds, and propagated 500,000 seedlings in their nursery;<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref> by 1984 the trust had planted 25,000 native trees in Pureora alone.<ref name="NFRT" />

In January 1988, King lead another group of protesters from the trust, along with English botanist David Bellamy, and climbed the same tōtara he had occupied ten years prior.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="The Press 1988"/> The trust were protesting a decision by the government to sell four blocks (7000 ha) of land to the Forest Corporation, rather than vesting it in the Department of Conservation. The trust said the land, which had been milled of native forest and planted with pine a decade earlier, was key to reconnecting parts of the forest that had been split.<ref name="The Press 1988">Template:Cite news</ref> In October 1990, Prime Minister Mike Moore announced that Pureora would be restored as a native forest.<ref name="NFRT" /><ref name="TA EA" />

In January 2000, on the 21st anniversary of his initial protest, King again climbed one of the tōtara trees in Pureora and released three carrier pigeons – one with a key attached to its leg – to send a symbolic message to the government that setting up a trust was "key" to managing the forest's future.<ref name=":0" />

King has been involved in the protection of kauri trees in the Northland Peninsula.<ref name=":3" /> King is also one of the patrons of the New Zealand Trust for Conservation Volunteers.<ref>New Zealand Trust for Conservation Volunteers</ref>

Personal life

King has notably spent the majority of his life barefoot, stating he "loves the feeling of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Template:Efn beneath his feet".<ref name="KC" /><ref name="TA EA" /><ref name="NZ Geo"/>

King was sentenced to four months' community detention in 2010 for possession of objectionable images, including child pornography.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref>