Wilf Bearman-Riedel – Candidate for Hutt South.

I have lived in Lower Hutt, Wellington for a number of years and I am University educated. I have put my name forward to represent the New Zealand Outdoors Party as I feel that our, environmental and cultural values have been eroded. When you see the amount of people in this country living on the streets or without homes to live in, struggling to make ends meet, something has majorly gone wrong. The rivers are polluted, harbours are full of sewerage and the food basket has been poisoned with some of the most toxic poisons man could invent. This is not the New Zealand I want to pass onto future generations.

When I grew up food was often scarce so the family would often turn to foraging. This is when I learnt the value of a clean environment. Our cultural values of being able to hunt and fish freely in this country are rapidly being undermined. 1080 has been used for about 60 years in this country. Yet our bird numbers have declined rapidly. The Kea Conservation Trust recently monitored 12 Keas in the Matukituki valley and found 6 of those 12 keas were killed by 1080 after a drop. That is a 50% kill rate achieved by DOC. No slow breeding bird population can sustain that amount of decimation when rats and stoats breed more rapidly. The (NZODP) strategy to deal with predatory animals will be target specific and ground based operations, maintaining constant pressure on predatory animal’s populations.

I would like to see New Zealand develop and head towards more organic and sustainable farming practices and believe this could be only beneficial for New Zealand as we could command a premium price on the world market for our produce. Plastic recycling and elimination from our environment is high on our agenda and we intend to replace plastics with natural fibres where possible.

In the past I have worked in pest destruction and in marine park management as well as coastal pohutukawa preservation (Project Crimson). I have been also involved in wet land restoration and the release of Brown Teal into the wild.

Water belongs to all New Zealanders. When I see this government and past governments giving away our water to foreign investment companies for peanuts this makes me angry. Eugenie Sage from the Green Party signed an extension to the bottling plant in the Bay of Plenty recently. The consent granted by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council in 2018 allows 1 billion litres of water to be taken per year and more than 3.5 million plastic bottles of water every day to be shipped to international markets in South East Asia. This has to stop.

Our rivers are loaded with nutrients and sedimentary run off from archaic forestry practices. This government has been selling vast tracts of land to foreign investment companies to be turned into forestry blocks to meet demands for their flawed Carbon Policy, signed in Paris. If we don’t meet these demands then the tax payer is going to have to meet them. My philosophy on this is, let’s tidy up our own environment first and not support another bloated organisation based in Europe.

The fishing management system is focused on bulk harvesting. Dumping of by catch occurs all the time. Yet MAF and this coalition government, especially New Zealand First claim the system is working to preserve fish stocks. Yet a Fisheries New Zealand assessment estimated the abundance of tarakihi on the East Coast to be 15.9 per cent of what it would be in the absence of all fishing. The fishery was considered to be sustainable at 40 per cent. It is time for change. Why aren’t recreational fishermen and fisherwomen, the mums, dads and kids of this country, put before the greed of commercial profit by the large fishing companies.

This is what I stand for.

Back the OUTDOORS PARTY and WE WILL BACK YOU.

Call me on 0212 606 202 or email: Wilfbearmanriedel@gmail.com

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Alan Simmons

Alan Simmons

President & Co-Leader Alan has dedicated a lifetime of involvement in outdoors political issues. He’s sat on a number of national body executives, boards, NGO and management groups, including the NZ Professional Hunting Guides Association, Electricorp Environmental Management Board, NZ Federation of Freshwater Anglers and the NZ Professional Fishing Guides Association. Many will know him through his website, the hugely popular New Zealand FishnHunt forum.

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