April, 2009
Thu, 23 Apr 2009 4:47 pm – Posted by Jenny Lynch | 6 Comments
Guest blogger: KCC co-ordinator, gardener, worm farm manager & composter, Jenny Lynch
From Michelle Obama to our very own Sister Loyola , gardeners are being celebrated around the world. Indeed, the ball of dirt that we call earth is now being tended to by a whole new horde of vege-growing environmentalists conscious of food miles, waste reduction and pesticides. It’s no wonder schools are jumping on board.
Of course, digging up school grounds and converting them into vegetable patches is nothing new. To cover the shortfall of vegetables being grown during WWII, New Zealand schools began digging up their playgrounds to grow vegetables under the “Dig for Victory’ campaign.
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Published in: General
Tags: education, food miles, gardening, waste reduction
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Tue, 14 Apr 2009 5:12 pm – Posted by Alison Ballance | 4 Comments
Guest Blogger: Radio New Zealand’s Our Changing World environment reporter, Alison Ballance
Last week I interviewed two NIWA scientists – Philip Boyd and Cliff Law – about ocean fertilisation, or iron enrichment. Most of us have heard about this ambitious plan, to help solve global warming by dumping large amounts of iron into the ocean, generating phytoplankton blooms which die and sink, effectively sequestering carbon in the deep ocean. I imagine most people thought as I did: that there is an international cabal of scientists and entrepreneurs who are pushing ahead with experiments to test out this grand theory despite concerns and fears about negative side effects, especially those related to unintended biological consequences.
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Published in: Climate Change, General
Tags: carbon sink, Climate Change, experiment, global warming, iron enrichment, NIWA, ocean fertilisation
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Tue, 07 Apr 2009 8:32 am – Posted by Mandy | 2 Comments
Cane toad
As we wage war on our possums, stoats, rats to save our precious feathered friends, lets think of our Aussie counterparts, who are battling the menace that is the cane toad (Bufo Marinus).
Plucked from Hawaii and transported to Australia, these toads were used in agricultural pest control to wipe out cane beetles in 1935. They failed.
Now, Aussies have a poisonous killing-machine on their hands. An animal that breeds rapidly, eats voraciously and kills most animals that tries to eat it, including freshwater crocodiles, kangaroos and household pets.
Cloaked in the kind of jargon used to flog insecticides, Toad Day Out was an opportunity for Northern Queenslanders to collect up these remarkable predators, and win prizes (not big ones though, this wasn’t exactly a bounty killing).
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Published in: General, Native land animals, Threats and Impacts
Tags: 1080, agricultural pest control, pest control, possums, rats, stoats
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Fri, 03 Apr 2009 1:07 pm – Posted by Tom | 3 Comments
Guest blogger: Photographer: Tom Marshall
Its not often you get the chance to hang around with royalty, but for the last few weeks I’ve had just that privilege with the Kingfishers (Kotare) of the Avon-Heathcote estuary near Christchurch.
Most often thought of as a bird of wetlands and coasts, the New Zealand Kingfisher is in fact a member of the ‘tree kingfishers’ family (Halcyonidae) and is just as likely to seen in farmland and forests, often far from water.
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Published in: General, Native land animals
Tags: hunting, kingfisher, prey
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Wed, 01 Apr 2009 8:52 am – Posted by Bob Walkington | 1 Comment
Guest blogger: Inaugural 2008 Pest-buster Winner, Bob Walkington.
To win the pest buster award means we have a pest problem. To lose the award I would say we are gaining ground over pests. My pest busting ‘career’ began 5 years ago, and I’ve realised to be a good trapper you need to go the extra mile. By that I mean, you need to check the trap itself adding more than just bait, using aniseed, and sometime a bit of eucalyptus to lure in pests. 1080 is a quick fix, but that doesn’t apply where I operate - Taranaki’s oldest covenant “Collier & Dickson” 360ha of lowland podocarp & hardwood forest filled with short-tailed bats, whitehead, kakariki, tomtits and fantail.
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Published in: General, Native land animals, Taranaki, Threats and Impacts
Tags: 1080, pest control, pest-buster, rats, stoats, timms traps. possumsm, trapping
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