28 July, 2021

Bear-country native goes bush on peninsula

Raised in a forest in the US, Lance Cablk was drawn to study nature, and now works amid New Zealand flora and fauna. He tells Helen Vause about his ecological path, career detours, and the projects keeping him busy today.

For Lance Cablk, there could never be enough hours in the day or hands on deck.

As coordinator of the Restoring Takarunga Hauraki (RTH) programme, it’s his job to support and develop a network of community-led restoration and conservation initiatives.

Since he took up the challenge, growing numbers of volunteers have joined him to trap rats, remove weeds, plant trees and more, in local reserves and on shorelines from Hauraki to the southern end of the Devonport peninsula.

He has a huge job. The Flagstaff caught him on the run, dashing in from muddy work at Philomel Reserve to his home office, to talk about his passion for the environment and the projects he’s leading locally.

It’s a far cry from the environment Cablk grew up in. When the affable American first arrived in New Zealand with his Kiwi partner 16 years ago, he probably couldn’t have named one of this country’s native plant or bird species.

“When I first got here, I couldn’t leave home without a guidebook of New Zealand’s plants and birds. It was all new and exciting,” he recalls.

He never imagined then he might one day know so much more about them. But it’s not surprising the draw of the natural world here was strong, even if Cablk never expected it to later become the focus of his career.

Cablk was raised in the large Hiawatha National Forest on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which has Lake Superior to the north and Lakes Michigan and Huron to the south. Nature was his backyard, powerful and fascinating to a boy growing up in a family avidly interested in their environment and the rhythm and life of the forest. Black bears, bald eagles, coyotes and wolves were among the creatures to be found around them, and more than 250 bird species shared the Cablks’ home patch.

Alongside a strong interest in the natural world, young Cablk also had music on his mind, and spent some of his school years at a boarding school specialising in arts education. He learned violin, later playing in orchestras and quartets, and sometimes teaching.

When it came to making a career, however, the pull of nature held sway. He signed up to study ecology at the University of Michigan.

During a summer placement as a student, he had the good fortune to join a University of California research station in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he observed ground squirrels, while living in another beautiful forest environment.

“I bought my first mountain bike when I was out there. And I thought, this is the life for me, being out here in nature. It was an amazing experience in an amazing place. Right there, before I was in my 20s, I realised I’d be making my career in environmental work.”

Back home in Michigan for postgraduate work on field stations there, he further developed his knowledge of forest ecology, botany, ecosystems, wetlands and more.

Next, he took the chance to spend six months in Costa Rica, where the lush rainforests and the stunning sights tempt both research scientists and the wider travelling public into extended explorations. The forests wowed the fledgling eco-scientist, almost capturing his heart, but his home environment still beckoned.

“I figured I couldn’t be all over the place with my work and realised I should go back and carry on with what I was already working on and knew a bit about.”

In Michigan, Cablk worked for the large non-profit Nature Conservancy, a private global organisation working with evidence-based science on the dual threats of biodiversity loss and climate-change challenges.

Through his years working with the organisation in a job he loved, Cablk gained broad expertise and built a career as a consultant ecologist.

But there was a significant change of direction coming in his personal world.

Cablk took time out to attend a course out of town, where he met his Kiwi future partner. Some time later, he found himself headed for another life in Auckland, New Zealand, a place where they called the forest ‘bush’ and the plants and birds were all unknown to him.

“At that time I couldn’t see how I could be working here as an ecologist. I’d come from a place of deciduous forests, edible berries, and mammals, so what could I offer here, I thought. And I had to think about other opportunities for making a living in Auckland.”

Cablk reverted to music, and began teaching violin. He also went back to studying, enrolling in a degree in early-childhood education.

Until four years ago, his day job had him working with Devonport preschoolers.

“I loved it,” says Cablk, “and today some of those kids are starting to show up as volunteers on our projects around the peninsula. That’s great to see.”

Once an ecologist, always an ecologist and it didn’t take Cablk too long to fall in love with the local environment and to want to start putting his skills back to work in it.

“We are pretty lucky in this setting and we have pretty fortunate geography. But the threats to our environment are very real.”

Lance Cablk

These days, he’s right where he wants to be, which for most of the time is outdoors working with like-minded people in all sorts of weather, rounding off the days with a well-earned cup of tea under a makeshift shelter.

On top of that, are the meetings, as well as education, where Cablk is out talking to many groups to increase eco-literacy – and hopefully to inspire more people to get out and get hands-on with community-led volunteer work in their own environment.

Back in the home office, he is kept busy with administrative work, keeping the news and information current on social media and creating helpful resources.

An online video shows Cablk in action in a local wetland giving detailed instructions on pulling weeds – carefully by their roots – and disposing of them correctly.

A busy Facebook page has regular reports from many sites on the peninsula, showing the ‘community-led and volunteer-powered’ RTH in action.

Photos from recent weeks show people at work on restoration at Jutland Reserve on the edge of Shoal Bay, a big group of all ages planting over a couple of days in Philomel Reserve, a fit-looking bunch from the Defence Force getting stuck into weeding in heavy rain, and a group working hard with shovels in Hanlon Reserve. Photos from earlier in the month show the entire Bayswater School out planting.

Reports cover the activities of the graphically named Zero Stoat Team, the Possum Defence Team and the Worst Weed Squad.

All of these projects have come to life under the guidance of RTH, and Cablk and his crew. Cablk says the ideal is to see more and more people taking responsibility for their own environment and getting involved with trapping and weeding close to home.

He has never managed to add any hours to the day, but his organisation has grown like topsy in both volunteer numbers and networks – and so has the list of future work.

He has more part-time workers helping him, but he acknowledges it is getting harder to keep up with the goals that Restoring Takarunga Hauraki has set for this patch of the city. The dreams are big but the resources are still rather slender for the restoration and protection work envisaged.

“We are pretty lucky in this setting and we have pretty fortunate geography. But the threats to our environment are very real. There’s no point in getting panicky about it, but we do need to figure out how we are going to work together on it. I could talk about it all day,” he says with a grin.