■ If you ask me about my favourite place on the North Island, I will tell you about Hukutaia Domain, a five-hectare remnant of extensive native forest that was set aside as a reserve, and Taketakerau, a 2000+ year old puriri tree, writes Dr Mawera Karetai.

It amazes me that we have a tree that is over 2000 years old in our backyard, and we can walk right up to it. If you haven’t visited, I recommend you do. I recently watched the film Think like a forest, featuring the very remarkable Sam Gibson. Sam talked about the value of connection and that stuck with me.

When I think of what it means to think like a forest, I see the world as a web of living relationships rather than a set of separate parts.

In a thriving forest, every tree, fern, bird and fungus is connected through unseen pathways of exchange and communication.

The roots intertwine, fungi transport nutrients, and fallen leaves become nourishment for new life. Nothing exists alone. Every living thing depends on the health of the whole.

It’s a lesson our human systems would do well to remember.

Too often, our workplaces, communities, and even our politics operate more like monocultures than thriving forests, rewarding individual competition, treating resources as infinite, and valuing control over connection.

The result is exhaustion, disconnection, and ecological decline. To think like a forest is to reject that logic. It asks us to see that our wellbeing, personal, social, and environmental, is inseparable from the networks we belong to.

If we want real systems change, it won’t come from new policies or technologies alone but from shifting how we think about who we are and where we stand.

In a forest, a tree’s identity is defined not just by its species but by its relationships: the life it shelters, the roots it shares, the nutrients it passes on.

Humans, too, are defined by our relationships, with our families, our colleagues, our whenua, and our communities.

Knowing who we are means remembering those connections and acting in ways that sustain them.

Knowing where we stand means understanding the context that shapes us. A forest grows differently depending on its soil, water, and weather.

Likewise, our actions take root in the conditions of our time and place. That awareness helps us see where growth is possible, where inequities limit light, and where regeneration must begin.

Systems change starts not by tearing down what exists but by tending carefully to what can flourish anew.

Thinking like a forest challenges the myth of independence. It reminds us that resilience comes from diversity and reciprocity, not uniformity or isolation.

In our workplaces, it might mean fostering cultures of care instead of relentless performance. In our communities, it could mean valuing collective wellbeing over personal success.

In how we govern, it might mean decisions grounded in long-term ecological and social health rather than short-term gain.

When we think like a forest, we understand that the strength of any system, human or natural, lies in its connections.

We begin to act less like separate individuals and more like a living network, learning from one another and supporting each other to grow.

The forest teaches us that enduring, healthy change doesn’t happen through force but through slow, steady transformation rooted in relationship.

That’s the kind of resilience we need here in the Bay of Plenty and beyond: deep, grounded, and interconnected, like the forest that already knows how to thrive.