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The wild river duck

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 7:58 am – Posted by Phil Bilbrough | 1 Comment

Blogger: Campaign Manager for the whio and Forest & Bird’s Marketing and Promotions Project Manager, Phil Bilbrough

The whio (or Blue Duck) is a seriously cool bird. It lives in white water. It is a torrent duck, and how cool is that? If kayaking is a cool whitewater sport but it is just a sport, then the whio who make white water their home, well… they must be ice cool.

Blue Duck, Photo: Craig McKenzie

It is a truly beautiful bird. Its grey feathers with flecks of brown is subtle, textured and stunning. There is something Yves Saint Laurent about its palette - these colours aren’t usually seen together but combine beautifully. It evokes both the rocks and wildness of a mountain river and serenity of nature.

Mining - the saga continues

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 9:41 am – Posted by Mandy | 1 Comment

Guest blogger: Forest & Bird’s Conservation Advocate Quentin Duthie

The Government is sharpening bulldozer blades and oil-rig drills. It’s prioritising digging and drilling for non-renewable resources over regulation and protection of the natural environment that our economy depends on.

Undeterred by the embarrassing u-turn on Schedule 4, Minister Brownlee is charging ahead with efforts to facilitate mining wherever possible. A review of the Crown Minerals Act, while quite technical, means making mining permits easier to get. More alarming is the Minster’s blatant advocacy for mining, unmatched by Government advocacy for the environment.

From the intoxicating fumes of the petroleum industry conference, the Minister announced a massive funding boost Crown Minerals – the agency that calls the mining industry “clients”. Unsurprising there is no corresponding boost for the Department of Conservation to advocate for the other side of the coin (just a $13.5m p.a. cut). This reflects the priorities in the proposed Energy Strategy: “develop resources” first, “environmental responsibility” fourth.

Published in: Climate Change, Energy, Threats and Impacts
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An ‘Edible Pest’ Animal Council?

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 2:02 pm – Posted by Mandy | No Comments

Guest blogger: Forest & Bird’s conservation advocate Quentin Duthie

Forest & Bird is concerned about a proposed “Game Animal Council” that would take over management of four of the largest and most tasty pest animals in New Zealand - deer, pigs, thar and chamois.

Deer ravaged forest, photo courtesy of DOC

We think it’s essential that management of these pest animals and their impact on the ecology of our public conservation lands remain with the Department of Conservation.

Unfortunately the new proposal differs from a panel recommendation in 2008, that affirmed that conservation remains the priority.

Many groups have an interest in pest animal management - hunters, conservationists, tourists, farmers, you name it - and it is important that a government agency can manage the challenges of pest managment and the conflicts between stakeholders.

Mining Schedule 4 bad economics

Mon, 31 May 2010 11:50 am – Posted by Mandy | No Comments

Blogger: Forest & Bird conservation advocate Quentin Duthie

There’s an old saying that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

It’s sort of true with mining in Schedule 4 lands too.

To stretch the metaphor to the case of Schedule 4 mining, getting the ‘bird’ buried under the bush will mean we lose the bird in hand and the two in the bush.

We’ll also badly damage the bush itself, and potentially scare off quite a few of the 1.6 million birds* that fly in to enjoy the bush every year.

This is pretty much the overall conclusion of three economics reports that Forest & Bird commissioned and appended to its submission on Schedule 4 mining.

They’re well worth a read, along with our submission.

Update: Celebrated physicist Professor Sir Paul Callaghan concurs. He said last week that the Government’s plans to mine on conservation land are “stupid economics”.

* 1.6 million international tourists participate in nature-based activities in New Zealand each year

Published in: General, Native plants and forests, Threats and Impacts
Tags: mining, schedule 4
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My life as a keaologist: Mt Cook trip #1

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 9:28 am – Posted by Guest | 2 Comments

Guest blogger: Builder-cum-kea enthusiast Corey Mosen

Kea, Tom Marshall

Due to being such a terrific ‘pack horse’ on the first trip I was lucky enough to be offered another chance to help Clio again, this time at Mt Cook and this time with my expenses paid. Here we had the same objective; to catch, band, blood test and observe as many kea as possible.

Published in: Canterbury, General, Native land animals
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Not so happy feet?

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.

Saving pennies and joules

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.

Published in: Energy, General
Tags: energy conservation, energy efficiency, new zealand
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Tree Crimes

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.

Just add iron? The great promise of ocean fertilisation

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.

All together now

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).

Topics

The wild river duck

Mining - the saga continues

An ‘Edible Pest’ Animal Council?

Mining Schedule 4 bad economics

My life as a keaologist: Mt Cook trip #1

Not so happy feet?

Saving pennies and joules

Tree Crimes

Just add iron? The great promise of ocean fertilisation

All together now

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