Internationally important wetlands are being polluted in the Waikato, as Al Fleming, Forest & Bird’s Central North Island Regional Manager, explains. New Zealand’s wetlands can be described as the “lungs” of land and water and support a greater diversity of native birds, fish, invertebrates and plants than most other habitats. But the Waikato River’s lungs, which are made up of […]
Australia’s Land for Wildlife (LFW) program has grown to include over 15,000 landowners wanting to restore wild-life areas, and I recently got a chance to travel there in the hope of re-creating a similar scheme here. The program was started in 1981 by two determined birders – Ellen McCulloch and Reg Johnson – who wanted […]
Blogger: Central North Island Field Officer, Alan Fleming We are now into our seventh day of cleaning up the mess that has resulted after the large oil spill off the coast of Tauranga. The accident – which happened early Wednesday morning – has released a large amount of oil (estimated to be 300 tonnes) which […]
Blogger: Central North Island Field Officer, Al Fleming KCC Co-ordinator Ann Graeme and I arrived at the Auckland Town Hall just in time to see the East coast iwi Te Whanau a Apanui arrive en masse. As they walked their Taiaha slashed through the air faster than a BP executive backpedalling on the safety of […]
Blogger: Forest & Bird’s North Island Field Officer, Al Fleming I can remember swimming in the Waikato River at Cambridge on a daily basis during my summer youth, but one look at the Waikato River at Mercer reminded me why that was no longer possible. High levels of faecal waste, zero visibility, phosphates and nitrogen […]
Blogger: Forest & Bird’s North Island Field Officer, Al Fleming. The seemingly innocuous, sea-dwelling plant that is the mangrove is dividing communities as it spreads throughout the estuaries and harbours in Northland and the Bay of Plenty. A host of environmental factors has turned these coastal hotspots into prime mangrove habitat. In the past 68 years, mangrove cover in Tauranga alone has […]
Browsed, milled, cleared & mined over the years – it’s not hard to see why one of our largest tracts of forest – the Bay of Plenty’s Kamai Mamaku forest – has been a key focus for several of our North island branches. So as the newly appointed central North Island field officer, my arm […]