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The complexities of understanding landscapes and heritage are compounded when ‘heritage landscapes’ become the focus of attention and this is further complicated by the attribution of natural or cultural heritage landscape. Much of the research on heritage landscapes has traced the interconnections between particular types of landscapes and their role in fostering national identity (Jones and Cloke 2002). For instance, ideas of wilderness and the importance of geological grandeur in the United States (Cronon 1995; Harvey and Cronon 2000; Nash 2001; Olwig 2002); the power of the Red Centre and the Outback in Australia (Waitt 1997; Carter 1998; Jones and Shaw 2007) are central to national identity in recently colonised countries, while in European countries it is ‘prolonged occupation’ that is seen to ‘weave heritage through landscape’ (Jones and Cloke 2002: 186). In countries primarily colonised by British emigrants there has also been a concern to protect landscapes that continue to retain the patterns of earliest European farming settlement, and this approach to heritage cultural landscapes is especially apparent in Australia (Taylor 1990, 1995; Russell 1989; Frawley 1990) and the United States (Melnick 1983,

1981; Kunst and O'Donnell 1981; Longstreth 2008). In New Zealand the term ‘heritage

landscape’ has primarily been associated with archaeological landscapes, although this is starting to change with broader surveys of some goldfield landscapes (see Stephenson, Bauchop, and Petchey 2004; Reeves and McConville 2011). Yet, in terms of predominantly built landscapes Barber and McLean (2000) suggest that architects, planners and historians have, in general, tended to privilege selected building types big-name architects and architectural fashions, and they argue that;

[a]ll in all, the built heritage sector still seems disinclined to heed the Parliamentary

Commissioner for the Environment’s sensible advice of 1996 that ‘as with ecosystems and landscapes, the hypothesis that “the whole may be more than the sum of its parts” may be applicable to historic and cultural heritage (2000: 99)

But adopting a landscape approach to heritage is not always straightforward, as Frawley notes, there are a number unresolved issues with protecting colonial landscapes ‘especially where pre- existing exploitative land uses intrude in areas now valued for nature conservation’ and he argues that ‘cultural landscapes should not be maintained by the continuation of environmentally damaging past land use practices’ (1990: 93). This, however, presupposes that the natural and cultural can be readily distinguished.

Some heritage landscape commentators adopt a view that nature and culture are readily

discernible, but what looks somewhat tenable in theory tends to unravel in practice. For instance, David Lowenthal suggests that we inherit legacies from both nature and culture but that;

[g]enerally speaking, natural heritage comprises the lands and seas we inhabit and exploit, the soils and plants and animals that constitute the world’s ecosystems, the water we drink, the very air we breathe. To be sure, human action has profoundly reshaped all these elements of nature, but we nonetheless consider them as quite distinct from our cultural heritage – the buildings and engineering works, arts and crafts, languages and traditions, humans

themselves have created out of nature’s raw materials (2005: 81-82)

This depends heavily on who the ‘we’ are, as will be seen in relation to world heritage, but Lowenthal also exaggerates the essential qualities of air, water, soils, plants and animals and ignores natural processes involved in cultural heritage. Another definition is offered by Adrian Phillips (then Director of the UK Countryside Commission) in a 1989 collection on heritage interpretation, where he unproblematically distinguishes between the countryside and natural environment. The latter is taken to mean ‘the natural world around [us]: the fauna and flora, the ecological systems which sustain them and of which they are a part’ while the countryside ‘is a more subtle concept. It implies a harmony between man and nature’ (Phillips 1989: 121). This suggests that the idea of countryside as heritage has strongly normative assumptions, but it is also difficult to see how countryside can be separated natural environment in practice. In the same volume Kenneth Olwig relates a story about a nature interpreter who is repeatedly asked ‘stupid’ questions about the cows grazing in the meadow where many birds, including lapwings, lived,

and who irritatedly replies to the ‘annoying’ questioner, that cows are ‘not nature’. Olwig argues that this completely misunderstands the relationships involved because;

To put it bluntly, no cows, no lapwing, no countryside heritage. It is because of the cow that Danish farmers have for centuries mowed and grazed various wetlands and thereby created meadows of a particular height and species composition. The lapwing is dependent on the cow because it primarily breeds and nests in such meadows. By ignoring the cow, the nature interpreter was ignoring, in effect, a whole heritage of human interaction with the

environment which created the countryside that formed the basis for the ‘nature’ that the interpreter interpreted (Olwig 1989: 133-134).

An analogous situation occurs on the Port Hills, whose swards of silver tussock (Poa cita) frame the backdrop of Christchurch, New Zealand, and are regarded by many as part of the city’s heritage (Kirby 1996a). These swards, however, would be overwhelmed, first by exotic grasses and then exotic and native shrubland if sheep grazing were removed (Meurk, Norton, and Lord 1989). But the tussock-covered slopes of the Port Hills that greeted the first European settlers in the 1850s, and to which people have subsequently become so attached, were the result of fires started by Maori prior to the settlers’ arrival (Wilson 2009). The point is to be wary about rushing to judgement about the ecological relations of the supposedly natural environment, because the natural and cultural are inextricably intertwined, as Olwig notes, it is possible ‘to view wild species both as nature and as cultural heritage’ (Olwig 1989: 139). Recent work on the role of disturbance in non-equilibrium ecology is only just beginning to tease apart such relationships (see for

example Scoones 1999; Wallington, Hobbs, and Moore 2005; Zimmerer 2000). So it is not always straightforward to decide how such areas should be managed.

Yet, most Western jurisdictions still manage natural heritage and cultural heritage separately, with the former managed by biological scientists, while the latter are managed by archaeologists and related professionals (Head and Regnéll 2012). The spatial implications of this include managing cultural sites and nature reserves separately from the broader landscape context, which Kučera et al. (2008: 87) suggest is the distinction between ‘heritage in landscape or landscape as heritage’. At the national or international scale heritage landscapes are sometimes recognised as world heritage, but this international mark of distinction can cause tension because of the way world heritage sites are listed as natural, cultural or mixed. Of the 962 currently listed World Heritage sites 745 are cultural, 188 are natural and only 29 are mixed (UNESCO nd-c). Carter (2010) suggests that,

[s]ome of this disjuncture occurs in the world heritage arena because the terminology of separate natural and cultural values is pervasive in planning for and in managing such sites, without a critical analysis of its implications (2010: 399)

For instance, the multi-national proposal to protect the Wadden Sea (along the coastline of The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark) as a World Heritage Area for its ecological values has sparked heated controversy because it is also a landscape that ‘has been stamped by a centuries- long interaction between people and the sea’ (Krauss 2005a: 39). So the question becomes ‘[w]hat

sort of nature, what sort of culture, is here to be declared part of the heritage of mankind?’ (2005a: 40-41). Krauss suggests that the notion of protecting ‘pure nature’ as world heritage ‘stimulated the counter-construction of a notion of a “pure culture”, a revived Friesian identity’ to combat the designation process (2005a: 44). Instead, he argues the landscape is ‘actually the result of heterogeneous societal and natural processes, it is, as Latour might put it, a constructed fact’ (2005a: 44). Consequently the question, for Krauss, is ‘not about nature and culture in an essentialist sense but rather about the good or bad construction of facts’ (2005a: 44). In a later article he sets out what is involved in studying the construction of facts in such a landscape;

[i]t is the negotiations, assemblies and networks that make up the coastal landscape – the landscape, that is understood as practice, as a dynamic process, as an activity. A landscape is neither natural nor cultural; it designates that activity which brings forth the ‘animated space’ in which we live our lives and live them as securely as possible (Krauss 2010: 199)

The converse situation occurs where a site is listed as a cultural World Heritage site but is valued or marketed primarily for its natural qualities. Davis (2007) highlights the case of Bikini Atoll19_, which was used for 23 nuclear-weapons tests between 1946 and 1958 that caused significant devastation, yet is valued by tourists primarily as a wilderness, and who see it as threatened by the return of native Bikinians, who ‘are seen not as premodern natives fitting in to nature but as agents who, if allowed, will defile the natural place through their modern behaviors’ (2007: 233) Davis contends that this a ‘testament to the power of the imaginary that divides the world into a global-scale system of civilized profane spaces and pristine wildernesses (2007: 233).

In an attempt to recognise nature and culture simultaneously UNESCO developed a category of ‘associative cultural’ (now called mixed) landscapes. So while both Tongariro (in New Zealand) and Uluru-Kata Tjuta (formerly Ayres Rock and Mt Olga in the Northern Territory of Australia) were initially inscribed on the World Heritage List as natural sites in 1990 and 1987 respectively, for their geological and ecological values, they were re-nominated as ‘associative cultural’ sites in 1993 and 1994 to reflect the sacredness of the sites to Tuwharetoa and Anangu Aboriginal people, respectively (Fowler 2003). Yet such listings remain rare and it is more often the case that landscapes with cultural associations are valued as purely natural landscapes (Carter 2010).

Studying the nomination process for the Te Wahipounamu/Southwest New Zealand World Heritage Area, Kirby argues that for the Department of Conservation (who officially nominated the area) and for many environmentalists, ‘New Zealand has an essential heritage, and it is natural. The traces of the people, though significant, are on the whole considered regrettable’ (1996b: 233). A similar elevation of the natural is argued to prevail among Australian

environmentalists, who ‘routinely fall back upon spatial distinctions between natural and artificial

19 _{Listed in 2010 as a cultural site that is an outstanding example of a nuclear test site and for the ideas and beliefs} associated with the Cold War (UNESCO 2010).

(or built) environments when articulating their concerns, and for whom the natural environment constitutes a moral terrain’ (Lien and Davison 2010: 238). Thus, as Kirby points out, ‘if

naturalness is what distinguishes New Zealand [and potentially Australia] from everywhere else, then no effort should be spared to ensure its protection for future generations’ (1996b: 233). The point of noting such large scale representations of national heritage as natural is that they can be enlisted to influence management of local landscapes, and this is arguably what has happened at Boulder Bay, although the discourse surrounding bird conservation in New Zealand is perhaps more relevant and is elaborated on in Chapter 6.

Despite the influence of such national ideas of heritage, it is quite possible for local landscapes to achieve recognition and affection that appear at odds with these broader notions of heritage. For instance, Owain Jones and Paul Cloke highlight the role of local popular memory in the changing heritage fortunes of Camerton colliery batchs (spoil heaps) that started as left over waste, became dominant landscape features, and were then planted with (usually nationally detested) conifers, which as the trees grew became valued by local kids who used to play there in gangs, thus demonstrating ‘how this site of “industrial wasteland” was now being appropriated by the local community as recreational space’ (2002: 172). Subsequently the trees themselves were valued as markers of the industrial past, and as part of the heritage landscape with the site becoming known as ‘Little Switzerland’ (Cloke and Jones 2000). This coming together of historic industry, spoil heaps, and planted exotic conifers highlights how difficult it is to disentangle the temporal and spatial dimensions of heritage landscapes as natural or cultural and the continual emergence of new heritages.

Whose heritage should be recognised and protected again comes to the fore in situations where animal conservation and nature restoration proposals come into conflict with cultural heritage, for example, when traditionally farmed or grazed landscapes are reserved for nature conservation (Griffiths 1991; Lockwood and Spennemann 2001; Lockwood, Tracey, and Klomp 1996), or when previously inhabited cultural landscapes are returned to ‘wilderness’ (Feldman and

Mackreth 2004; Cronon 2003). While Krauss (2005b) shows how the rhetoric of otter protection is used to legitimate nature conservation in an impoverished agrarian area of Portugal. These cases, however, share only limited similarities with the situation at Boulder Bay, but a more apposite example concerns the La Jolla Children’s Pool20 _{that has been adopted as a haul out by} harbor seals (Lulka and Aitken 2011). The authors are concerned with the ‘effect that the imperative of heritage preservation has upon the vitality of a place’ (2011: 170), and endeavor to

20 _{The pool, built in the 1930s, is formed by a concrete wall that created the only safe swimming beach along the La Jolla} coast; however, the wall has caused the pool to fill with sand thus creating a sandy beach that has been adopted by the harbor seals, which now form the only colony in Southern California. The argument centres on whether the sand should be dredged to allow swimming, or remain, with the area being re-designated as a Coastal and Marine Sanctuary.

find ways of adjudicating over whose heritage should be protected, given the problems ‘generated by too much reliance upon historical precedents’ (2011: 186). As they point out:

We are thus presented here with a situation in which two histories, or rather two material concretions, that of the children’s aquatic environment and that of the wildlife sanctuary, are duelling for the present. Proponents of each are asserting the priority of their material concretion. Again, Nietzsche is helpful here, for he realized that no historical concretion has ultimate legitimacy, as the search for origins is hopeless. There is only a changing sense of what is natural, commonsensical, and taken-for-granted, that is, the proper state of things. … [There is no] indisputable means of deciding between the parties by dint of their own properties. We must look elsewhere (2011: 180-181)

They propose that flexibility is central to generating new social arrangements, suggesting ‘[t]he present becomes not one of choosing between dwindling remnants, but rather becomes a moment of flexibility that opens outward into unknown (though not unbounded) possibilities’ (2011: 184). This involves engaging with historic sites because they have relevance to

contemporary life, rather than because they are historical, and Lulka and Aitken argue that, despite the specifics of their particular case, this situation is widely applicable to many aspects of contemporary life as communities seek to preserve or recreate an area’s vitality. This argument certainly has relevance for the situation at Boulder Bay; however, since my focus is primarily on what happens rather than what should happen, it is less relevant, but I would also argue that specifics can be quite crucial. The situation at Boulder Bay is more akin to proposing that a functioning Children’s Pool should be filled with sand so seals could be translocated there, with the hope that they would continue to return.

The situation with the Children’s Pool and the harbor seals again highlights the emergent nature of heritage, where a given thing is not inherently heritage, but rather it is the processes of valuing and assessing significance of something that accords it heritage status. It can just as easily be a seal or a lapwing as a building or a seaside swimming pool, but such heritage is not self-evidently natural or cultural heritage. As we have seen, however, whose heritage is recognised can be affected by the particular disciplinary perspectives of those doing the assessment, which Smith (2006) argues, tends to lead to a ‘authorised heritage discourse’ that privileges monumentality and grand scale, innate significance, expert judgement, and nation building. Recent scholarship has sought to challenge this received view of what heritage is and how it is recognised, focusing instead on popular, vernacular, mundane, everyday heritage from below, the processes of heritage recognition and designation, and how people develop intimate and sensuously embodied

relations with heritage, and consequently mobilise to defend places and activities. Arguments over whether a particular heritage place or activity should be recognised frequently revolve around whether they are considered authentic or not, and for some this is primarily a matter of expert judgement, which suggests it is purely an innate material property, but as we shall see authenticity is every bit as contentious and slippery to define as landscape and heritage. In the

same way it is difficult to decide what an authentic jærhus is, because the buildings are lived in and adapted, so too, it is difficult to decide what should be considered an authentic bach or an

authentic bach landscape.