While "Ravaged Beauty" is about the environmental history of one North Island region, the impact of human settlement and accompanying development for improving human settlement conditions is typical of many New Zealand regions. This impact, graphically illustrated in this well researched and entertainingly told history, gained great pace with the arrival of European settlers in the mid 1800s. Only a century and a half ago, the Manawatu was a heavily forested hinterland: the floodplains were a sea of swamps and lagoons, teeming with birdlife, eels and other fish; the hills and terraces were covered with thick impenetrable forest, refuge perhaps to a few lingering moa. But within a few decades, the forest had been reduced to ashes, and the swamps and lagoons were being drained away. Progress marched across the landscape in the form of farms and settlements. However, it wasn't long before nature "exacted its revenge": erosion scarred the hillsides, floods ravaged farms and towns. Pollution of the rivers saw fish dying en masse. How would the people of the region meet these environmental challenges, and what lessons would there be for the future? By "peeling away the layers", this book tells the intriguing story of the Manawatu's environmental history, drawn from a rich array of sources, maps and historical images.