Sam The Trap Man says there's an art to building a long drop

Due to human activity, over two-thirds of New Zealand's native bush is already gone.

In the new short film Think Like a Forest,Sam Gibson introduces Kiwis to Recloaking Papatūānuku - a planting proposal which would restore 2.1 million hectares of native trees within the next 30 years.

"We've got the strategy, we just need the buy-in [from the government]. The cost of not doing it is pretty dire," he tells RNZ's Nine to Noon.

After increased flood damage in recent years, most New Zealand communities now agree on the wisdom of urgently "recloaking" New Zealand with native bush, Gibson says.

He was just 12-years-old when he became a trapper, and now shares his passion for native trees and wildlife with over 33K Instagram followers.

'Have you ever licked an insect's bum?' was the title of a recent video about the "beautiful sugary excrement" of the aphid. In another, Gibson heads to the beach to cook up a feed of huhu grubs with his kids.

As a teenage trapper in the Te Urewera forest, Gibson learned about native trees and their role in the environment from some "incredible bushmen", including a guy called Keith, who cruised around barefoot in a woollen bush shirt and black trackies, carrying a machete.

The forest "has a way of slowing us down", he told Nine to Noon last year, and very early on, it was clear that for him, the bush was the "best classroom".

"I'm a pretty 'million miles a minute' type human, and those four walls were pretty constricting to me.

"[The forest] really captured my imagination and sort of sent me on a bit of a nerdy journey into understanding trees and plants."

After working in Te Urewera, Gibson did a stint digging traps out of metre-high snow in Fiordland, he told RNZ.

In the freezing cold temperatures, he and his crew had to slice up their foam mattresses to add insulation to their sleeping bags. And the super-high rainfall added a certain element to the long drop experience.

"You do your business, you get a bit of splash-back up the rectum. That's less than ideal. That's disconcerting."

The art to building a long drop is all about placement, Gibson says.

"You don't want to put it in any low area where the water column's going to be pretty high. You want to put it just up the hill a little bit."

Over years of setting traps in the bush, Gibson told RNZ he's been shot at no less than four times. Once was by "some 1080 protesters" shooting off rounds, he says. The other times - when he thinks hunters mistook him for a deer - include one very close call.

"I heard [the bullet] whistle straight past my ear. That was very worrying, to be honest.

"I've got children now, which means that I've got to come home from the bush these days. I'm much more careful, I'm much more loud and I make sure that I sing a lot when I'm working in the bush and I think there might be other people around."

After working around the country, Gibson, his wife Roimata Sinclair and their two kids are now settled in Tairāwhiti Gisborne.

"I had a bit of a brush with the black dog. I got pretty depressed, really, in one stage of my life. I thought, hey, no better place to come right than home.

"I started up the Eastern Whio Link (a native bird conservation project), started surfing a lot more - which is another thing Gisborne's got to offer - and started my road to recovery from depression.

"Tairāwhiti is a beautiful place, and it's a place of happiness and health for me. It's definitely home."