David Haynes co-leader Comments on a number of current issues
WATER WOES
Fresh (in the loosest possible sense of the word) water is front and centre stage these days and will be a central plank of the 2017 General Election for all parties - even National is planning to soften its stance on "wadeable" as being an acceptable standard.
A month ago I attended a showing of Tasman District Council's film "Our Waters In Common" - a really well put together piece on how communities are volunteering to plant trees to help restore waterways (more on this later). A senior Council manager stood up at the end and said to the audience of around 500 people "of course we all want swimmable rivers" to which there was a strong murmur of agreement.
Then, a couple of weeks back I attended the annual Cawthron/Royal Society lecture, this year on the amazing qualities of water. The highlight for me was a fellow Trustee standing up to formally thank Alok Jha for his talk with her saying "we look forward to all our rivers being swimmable". I'm sure this was not lost on her fellow Trustee in the front row, the Hon Nick Smith MP!
THE PLANT A TREE MYTH
The good work so many have contributed to riparian planting is to be commended, but not considered as the panacea to our freshwater woes, more of a sticking plaster on the intensification of farming.
Subsidised irrigation schemes by the current Government are:
- $60M Irrigation Acceleration Fund (2011-16)
- $400M Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd (2011-2016)
And subsidised Clean Ups from the consequence of irrigation schemes, failing urban wastewater treatment plants, forestry run off and industrial effluent are:
- $100M Freshwater Improvement Fund (2016)
- $265M Fresh Start for Freshwater (2011)
- $100M Riparian Retirement Fund (2014)
Most of the money on the clean ups has been spent on tree planting which is a good thing in respect of:
it can improve in-stream conditions (willows, often an impediment to anglers, do provide excellent trout and eel habitat).
Tree lined rivers and lakes look nice.
It creates positive community adhesion.
But it tends to address the symptoms, rather than strike at the cause which is the continued intensification of farming and its attendant high irrigation requirements and diffuse pollution loads. Similarly, all the trees in the world will not improve or remove bacteria and parasites such as campylobacter, e. coli, giardia and cryptospiridium.
The Outdoors Party "Keep Freshwater Fresh" sets out our core beliefs:
- keep freshwater fresh.
- keep our rivers and lake full.
- water is free and belongs to everyone.
- polluters will pay.
How do we achieve these? Well, implementing a National Environment Standard for Land Use which sets out capacity and use limits for each land type is a start. Diverting investment from dams to on-farm water harvest which captures water when rivers are raging and rains are pouring is another.
HAWKES BAY
We are grateful to Tom Belford and BayBuzz magazine for providing this photograph of cattle feedlots adjacent to the Tukituki river and suggest this is a prime example of a wadeable river which meets our freshwater standards as set out in the National Objectives Framework.
David Parker, Labour Party Environmental Spokesperson has also been busy with his camera, this time capturing how we treat the Ngaruroro River with similar disdain:
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY SPEECH
Hon Nick Smith, now best known for his recent speech at Lincoln University and roundly condemned for blaming birds for polluting our freshwater. What he said was "We've got water bodies like the Washdyke Lagoon here in Canterbury and Lake Papaitonga in the Manawatu which are home to many birds whose E. coli make it impossible to meet the swimming standard without a massive bird cull."
More interesting to us was his declaration that diffuse pollution (runoff from farms for example) "....is much more challenging to regulate. It is difficult to measure as it is small amounts of runoff over large areas that just seeps into the drains and aquifers 
and which gradually accumulate," New Zealand signed up to the 1992 Rio Declaration which sought to address such pollution and yet here we are in 2016 still not able to manage the problem. We believe a maximum stock unit quota for each type of land mass, is one initiative well worth exploring further.
MT PISA - A TOWERING ERROR
Thanks to Mike Pannet for alerting us to some strange goings-on at Mt Pisa Station in Central Otago. Murray McMillan, the owner, is in dispute with DoC over allowing recreational hunters on to adjacent Conservation Land, via an easement which passes over his property, borne from Tenure Review in 2004. Irrespective of the reasons for wanting to stop hunters using the Mt Pisa access route, Mr McMillan may have made a grave error in hiring.....wait for it....a PR consultant to manage the issue. Step forward Michael Laws, ex National Party MP, NZ First representative, Whanganui mayor, Napier City Councillor and talk show radio host with an interesting Wikipedia entry.
BATTLE FOR OUR BIRDS
Like us, most hunters don't like 1080, principally as it poisons our dogs and our wild game animals. And rather than focus on 1080 per se, we believe the issue is more on the aerial distribution of toxins - whether it is Pindone, Cyanide, Cholicalciferol or Brodifacoum, aerial top dressing results in the same indiscriminate kill of all animals who ingest it or a poisoned carcass.
In addition the evidence points to a conservation addiction to 1080 poison, why else would we continue to use it for over fifty years despite still having "biblical plagues" of rats? Even DoC's own web sites acknowledges this:
Success from pest control in 2014
The Battle for our Birds programme successfully stopped rat and stoat plagues triggered by widespread forest seeding in 2014....
Pest control in 2016
Widespread forest seeding this autumn will lead to another rapid rise in rat and stoats...,
Given the deaf ears that the Ban 1080 message has been landing on, we need to focus on new messages if we are to protect our game resource and recreational estate. We are pushing for two things
Alternatives, such as the Goodnature self setting traps and the Para-aminopropiophenone (PAPP) a stoat-specific poison, are promising, as is the evidence of low stoat and rat numbers in Te Urewera Mainland Island and Nydia Bay, where local people manage intensive trapping programmes. Possum trapping and species specific bait stations will also play a valuable role in unwanted animal control.
Reprioritising unwanted organisms: Ask any hunter or angler who frequents beech forest what animal most ruins and restricts their enjoyment of the outdoors and they will most likely answer wasps. Wasps are starting to gain attention of DoC and MPI as they destroy the food chain for insect eaters, from fantails to trout and cicadas are near extinct in the Nelson Lakes due to wasp predation. DoC have had successful trials of Vespex, an insect bait/poison from a Nelson company and both Landcare and Victoria University are researching other wasp ridding solutions. Read our press release on Wasps of last november.
Similarly Didymo and Lake Snow have been shunted into the background for too long, these unwanted weeds have ruined many a fishery, such as the Buller and now Lake Wanaka. NIWA has completed some interesting research on the influence of phosphorus on Didymo blooms - exactly the sort of research that benefits conservation AND recreation.
ACP, who manufacture 1080 baits, made $7.2M in sales for the year to June 2015 and given that DoC assigned $21M to the 2014 poisoning campaign, it provides a good indicator that the bulk of the money is not actually spent on the poison itself, rather distribution and administration - plenty of fat for alternative research.
The original Press relase.. Ruataniwha Environmental Benefits - Yeah Right! 10th Aug 2016
