HOW TO BUY A MOUNTAIN
Last October, about a hundred people assembled at a brewpub in Lyttleton to raise some money to buy a mountain. It wasn’t your typical glitzy charity do —more jeans and jandals than black tie, more backpacks than bling. But then it wasn’t your typical fundraiser, either.
The assembled guests had been invited to Eruption Brewing bar for the launch of a crowdfunding campaign to purchase 500 hectares of rugged land about 40 minutes drive from Christchurch. If successful, the new Te Ahu Patiki reserve would connect private reserves and Department of Conservation land to form a 1700-hectare summit-to-sea network of tracks between Christchurch and Akaroa. It would put Mount Herbert/Te Ahu Patiki and Mount Bradley, the two highest peaks of the Christchurch/Otautahi district, under conservation management; ensure walking tracks currently on private land remain accessible to the public; and return historic pasture lands to native bush.
Lying directly across the harbour from Lyttelton, it is a dramatic landscape. Steep gullies of native bush give way to open pasture and rocky outcrops, kereru ruffle the autumn air, piwakawaka flit across the lower tracks.
“Adam said he’d put a thousand bucks in, I said I’d put a thousand bucks in. All we’d need is another 2000 people.”
Can it be ours? The Te Ahu Patiki appeal is the latest of a number of crowdfunding campaigns in recent years asking ordinary New Zealanders to pitch in and buy a block of significant land. The campaigning tactics vary, but the goals are usually the same: to ensure public access, restore natural biodiversity, return land to iwi or stop it being snapped up — and locked down — by foreign owners.
They are plausible goals. After all, each year we give around $1.5 billion in personal donations to charitable organisations. The UK’s Charities Aid Foundation put us in third place in its 2019 World Giving Index — we are also the only country to appear in the top 10 for all three philanthropic measures: helping a stranger, donating money and volunteering time. But giving a few dollars for Daffodil Day or a guide dog is one thing. How do you get Kiwis to fork out for a mountain?
In the case of Te Ahu Patiki, the price tag was $1.5
