May, 2009
Fri, 22 May 2009 11:36 am – Posted by Guest | 8 Comments
Guest blogger: Builder-cum-kea enthusiast Corey Mosen
Corey makes friends
This is the story of how I went from carting wheel barrow loads of sand down steep hills, attempting to build houses, to spending my time in the Mountains of Mt Aspiring National Park looking for, observing, and catching Kea.
First things first, I had to convince my boss that it was a good idea to let me take time off work, this wasn’t easy because it was the middle of summer when it is ideal weather and therefore more opportunities to work outside building, getting the most work done possible in the long day light hours. But I eventually persuaded him that it was a good idea and that it would eventually benefit his business in the long run because I’d work harder when I returned. I then went south for 10 days.
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Published in: General
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Tue, 19 May 2009 12:33 pm – Posted by Tom | 5 Comments
Yellow eyed penguin, Andrew Walmsley
Guest blogger - Photographer, Tom Marshall
A comment my colleague and I often get as New Zealand photographers is ‘you must have had a wonderful time in Antarctica’. As much as I’d love to say ‘yes, it was awesome, but a bit chilly’, the truth is we’ve never set foot south of Dunedin and people are usually looking at our pictures of Fiordland Crested or Yellow-eyed Penguins.
Now I love ‘Happy Feet’ and ‘March of the Penguins’ with their iceberg-strewn backdrops as much as the next person, but it’s surprising how few people realize that we have some of the most amazing – and rarest penguins on the planet are right on our doorstep.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said recently of a new tourism drive ‘I doubt tourists will want to come to the South Island just to see a penguin’ – but why not? From recollection they were fairly thin on the ground north of the equator last time I was there, and with a million birdwatchers in the UK alone, I’m sure there’s plenty of people who’d willingly put up with the West Coast’s finest sandflies for a glimpse of a Fiordland Crested Penguin in his dapper dinner jacket.
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Published in: General, Marine and Coastal, Otago, Southland / Stewart Island, Threats and Impacts
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Fri, 15 May 2009 11:04 am – Posted by Mandy | 3 Comments
As Vicki noted, the television has undergone it’s most major makeover since it changed its colours in the mid-50s: it’s been supersized.
Yes, yes, across the world, these jumbo TVs dwarf cramped rooms, so much so, that viewers need to gently fold themselves into the room’s recesses, only to be relieved of their pins-and-needles by their TV’s cinematic scale and its newly acquired attention to detail.
We’ll need to super-size our homes, to fit out super-size televisions. Not surprisingly, it seems that the US is leading the charge – the size of the American house has doubled since the 1950s.
Our willingness to biff our old TVs for these energy-hogging plasma screen TVs has left environmentalists & conservationists reeling. Not only will our old televisions fill our landfills, these new plasma screen televisions can use as much electricity as a refrigerator, sapping our hydro-plants and power stations.
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Published in: General
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Tue, 05 May 2009 10:54 am – Posted by Guest | 2 Comments
Guest blogger: Vicki Connor, Communications Team Manager at the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority
Our demand for energy – electricity for our homes and petrol and diesel for our cars keeps rising. Some of it is down to population growth, but a lot of it is simply because as individuals we are using and doing more stuff. We drive more, buy more products and appliances and use them for longer.
The average NZ home has two televisions and chances are they are not small - plasma flat screen TVs tend to be between 42 to 100 inches, and can use around three times the electricity of a smaller traditional cathode ray tube set. We buy these things because many of us want them. We like watching TV and, if we can afford it, we want to watch it on a state-of-the-art, massive screen. Just because it looks better. It’s the same as wanting to drive instead of taking the bus. It can be more convenient, more comfortable, easier. And isn’t an easy life what many of us are after? And it’s a free country after all.
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Published in: Energy, General
Tags: energy conservation, energy efficiency, new zealand
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Fri, 01 May 2009 9:44 am – Posted by Guest | 2 Comments
Hauraki island branch secretary, Sue Fitchett
I am a self-described tree lover and so the proposed changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) have left me, and many others fearing for our notable and second generation trees.
Trees, as poet Ruth Fainlight wrote, are those witnesses, huge mild beings/who suffer the consequence/of sharing our planet and cannot/move away from any evil/we subject them to
The changes are effectively a costly opt-in system, whereby each and every tree will need to be scheduled, either as a grove or individually (In Auckland City the cost could be in the vicinity of $200 per scheduling) in order to receive some protection.
Banning tree protection rules, as the Government plans to do, will leave trees in 700 of Auckland’s 800 parks unprotected, and give landowners the ability to cut down any tree that is not in a reserve or listed in a district plan schedule.
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Published in: Auckland, General, Native plants and forests
Tags: arborist association, resource consent, RMA, trees
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