Kaimanawa Princess

It's about a girl named Becky and she gets a Kaimanawa Pony named Kaimanawa Princess. Becky and some other people have a debate about if the Kaimanawa Ponies should be killed or not.

By the way the Kaimanawa Ponies are New Zealand's Wild Pony and they live in the Kaimanawa Ranges which are in New Zealand.

"Kaimanawa" means "wind-eater" in Maori.

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Jan 04, 2011
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Kaimanawa Princess
by: Georgia

To expand -

Kaimanawa Princess is based on a very true story, which I will tell.

In 1996, a new plant was found in the Kaimanawa Ranges. This plant is nowhere else on earth. DOC, the Department of Conservation, as well as the NZ government, decided to cull all Kaimanawas.

New Zealand's horse lovers banded together in protest. 13 year old Rochelle Purcell and her Kaimanawa pony, Kaimanawa Princess, appeared in a television commercial and joined in the protest on the Desert Road to save the Kaimanawas that were not captured and sold in the first (and supposedly last) round up. It was eventually decided that there would be an annual round up to keep Kaimanawa numbers down. This round up still happens.

The book is not the actual story of Rochelle. Most of the characters in the book are fictional.

Kaimanawas are technically not wild - they were not native. They are referred to by DOC as a feral pest.

Kaimanawa actually means to "eat the wind". The word is from the Maori language. The Kaimanawa ranges are very barren and hard to live on - boiling hot in summer, freezing in winter, and earthquakes every so often. The concept is that when things got hard, the strong would "eat the wind" and endure.

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