Forest & Bird » Threats and Impacts

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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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.

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).

A day in the life of a pest-buster

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.

A weighty issue

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 8:29 am – Posted by Bev Woods | 11 Comments

Guest Blogger: Bev Woods, Secretary for the Northern Branch

Godwits on Manawatu Estuary

As many of you will know, our bar tailed godwits are fattening up for their 11,500 kilometre trip to the Alaskan-north, and will depart anytime in the next few weeks. Packing on an estimated 50% of their body weight in fuel, the birds are currently in the throes of what is best described as a feeding frenzy.

However, their attempts to pile on fat is being thwarted by a group of kite-surfers who race through their resting and feeding area, causing them to take flight and use up valuable fuel. This situation is set against a gloomy international picture in which habitats of godwits are shrinking. The drainage of wetlands, and the discharge of toxic discharges are just some of the reasons they have fewer and fewer spots to feed and rest-up. Two years ago, around 6000 godwits came to the Whangarei Harbour habitats. This year there have been only around 3000.

Sea lions in Minister’s hands

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:28 am – Posted by Kirstie_Knowles | 7 Comments

New Zealand sea lions once ranged right around our coastline, however today they are largely restricted to the isolated islands of the Sub-Antarctic – with over 85% of breeding at the Auckland Islands.

Each summer the Auckland Island squid trawl fishery takes to these water with large trawl nets that scoop up squid. As well as picking up squid however, the fishing nets catch a number of sea lions. As rule-maker & whistle-blower, one of the first questions facing the new Minister of Fisheries – Phil Heatley - is how many sea-lions can be killed this season?

Welcome to the F&B blog

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 9:22 am – Posted by Marina | 4 Comments

Welcome to Forest & Bird’s weblog. Like Forest & Bird itself, our weblog will touch on just about everything native and New Zealand: our native plants, animals, our wilderness areas and environment, whether they are on land, in our lakes, rivers and oceans.

We welcome your thoughts and ideas about how we can all contribute to helping preserve our precious – and vulnerable – natural heritage.

Standby for opinion pieces, diary-style web-logs, videos of our projects and much, much more. Just watch this space!

Published in: Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Canterbury, Climate Change, Energy, F&B National, Fresh water, Gisborne, Hawkes Bay, High country, International, Manawatu-Wanganui, Marine and Coastal, Native land animals, Native plants and forests, Northland, Otago, Regions, Southland / Stewart Island, Taranaki, Threats and Impacts, Top of the South, Topics, Waikato, Wellington, West Coast
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Threats and Impacts

An ‘Edible Pest’ Animal Council?

Mining Schedule 4 bad economics

Not so happy feet?

All together now

A day in the life of a pest-buster

A weighty issue

Sea lions in Minister’s hands

Welcome to the F&B blog

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