Looking back for the future: Local knowledge and palaeoecology inform biocultural restoration of coastal ecosystems in New Zealand

Abstract

We combine local knowledge of elders and environmental practitioners from two indigenous Ma¯ori communities and pollen evidence in soil cores from two islands and two mainland coastal sites to inform the planning of coastal ecosystem restoration initiatives in New Zealand. The Ma¯ori participants desired ecosystems that delivered cultural (e.g., support for identity), social (e.g., knowledge transfer), economic (e.g., agroecology) and environmental (e.g., biodiversity protection) outcomes to their communities. Pollen records identified three periods when vegetation was dominated by different taxa: (1) Pre-human (