Bloggers: Communications Officer, Dave Brooks & Conservation Advocates, Quentin Duthie, Debs Martin & Mark Bellingham
If you’ve got a hankering for a little natural history, or you’re wanting to pick up green-read this summer look no further. In this blog, our staff give you their top picks.
Quentin Duthie, Consevation Advocate
During the summer, I usually head into the wilderness to climb high ridges and follow deep rivers. For me, nothing beats the beauty of snow-capped peaks above lush forest and tawny tussock, except perhaps the wink of a cheeky kea eyeing my lunch.
I’ll also have a bit more time on my hands for holiday reading: among them the latest NZ Alpine Club Journal, magazines and novels. However, I also want to read some cerebral material this summer, and my topic of choice is the economics of conservation. I anticipate this will be a major topic of debate and policy development in 2011, including at forthcoming conferences of Forest & Bird and the Federated Mountain Clubs (see p18-20 of their Nov Bulletin [PDF 5Mb]).
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.
For good reason, Jaws has been spoofed ad nauseum. And just when you thought this line of film had breathed it’s dying breath conservationists with cameras have taken up the mantle, bringing new levels of absurdity to this genre. The recently awarded Save our Seas Foundation video is just the ticket, driving home the point that sharks pose as much threat to our safety as falling coconuts & soda machines.
Well, well, well, as I predicted in my pre-election blog (OK, so it was hardly long odds or a wild bet) we have a new government. The question is now, what’s in it for conservation?
At the moment, we’re waiting to see who gets the ministerial posts of most interest to us here at Forest & Bird: Conservation, Environment, Climate Change (if they have a specific minister with responsibility for climate change this time round), Energy, Agriculture, Land Information and Fisheries.
Just three weeks till the election and while the polls are tightening up a bit I probably wouldn’t be a making wildly speculative punt in predicting that they might be rearranging the furniture in the Beehive soon.
That thought has been exercising the minds of environmental types lately, in particular thinking about what a change of government would mean for conservation.
Mostly (but not entirely) the thinking among them is that a centre-Right government wouldn’t be a good thing.Me, I’m prepared to wait and see.In a past life as a press gallery journalist I spent far too much time in daily close proximity to politicians to maintain any delusion that any particular party had a monopoly on good policy in any given area, conservation included.
