This paper analyses the turning-point in attitudes to the most distinctive feature of one nation's indigenous environment. Some conservation of New Zealand's native forest began long before the Scenery Preservation Act of 1903, but until then the primary motivation was economic. After 1903, aesthetics and national identity became recognised as important additional factors. In 1913, the Forestry Commission found that managed native forest was incommensurate with New Zealand's long-term timber requirements. This left the way clear for preservation for primarily non-economic reasons to become, increasingly, the hallmark of New Zealand's approach to native forest.

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Following the creation of the Empire Marketing Board in 1926, Australia's development was influenced by an imperial science increasingly aware of ecology. The present paper traces similar New Zealand links in the ecological approach to pasture development promoted in the Dominion by Bruce Levy and fuelled by the vision of George Stapledon of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, who visited New Zealand in 1926. However, plant ecology came much earlier to New Zealand by way of Leonard Cockayne, who in 1908 used ecological arguments to press for the extension of Tongariro National Park and who saw New Zealand's unique plant associations as emblems of nation rather than endowments of empire. By comparing the application of ecology, in New Zealand at different times, to the separate (though not necessarily opposed) goals of building a nation and supporting an empire, insight is gained into the changing ways in which any science may be drawn into the service of societal priorities and aspirations.

Even before 1900, the emphasis in New Zealand agriculture shifted from extensive agriculture to more intensive use of existing farmland through pasture improvement. Examination of the contribution of the Department of Agriculture, which together with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research activated the later ‘grasslands revolution’, shows both the extent and the limits of its role in pasture improvement before 1914. It is suggested that until then, the prime agents in this transformation were not Department of Agriculture staff but rather enlightened farmers, with co‐operation between them on an equal footing towards the end of the period.

As a land to which not only Europeans, but also humans of any kind, came late, New Zealand is a fascinating case study in environmental history. The author's own research into the early years of European settlement plots an evolving cultural engagement with the indigenous environment, and in particular with forest or 'bush,' which ran parallel with its extensive replacement by agroecosystems. Research of this character must now be closely compared with work done overseas-perhaps initially with Australian studies. Only by drawing out the unique features of each case will the respective roles of environment and culture in the history of New Zealand, and of other countries, be fairly determined. All rights reserved.