It’s Conservation Week. Get outside, show the kids nature!
Shame that 2/3rds of our rivers aren’t swimmable. It’s no wonder that water gets into places like Havelock North’s drinking supply.
Radio NZ have a good comment piece about the Anthropocene Age we now live in. Humans have so affected the every bit of the world that we’ll show up from a geological view. They’re still identifying a year to begin but somewhere around 1950 there will start to be enough sediment contaminated from nuclear tests, plastic rubbish and concrete that we’ve made a permanent mark.
The Ministry for the Environment classifies as ‘endangered’ 81 percent of our resident bird species, 72 percent of freshwater fish, 88 percent of reptiles, 100 percent of native frogs, and 27 percent of resident marine mammal species.
Maui dolphin being the most worrying, and the plummet in Kea numbers being today’s worry. Biodiversity is another human-caused crisis as large as climate change (and by that I don’t mean to diminish climate change!), but much less well publicised.
So good on the government for predator-free by 2050! Except… $7 million/year? NRT has done the sums: Predator-free by 3300!
And indeed he’s done better with OIAs to work out a better number after Magic TechTM. DoC actually think they could do it for $50-80 million/year. Which is ~20% increase in DoC’s budget, so not beyond reason. Predator free NZ for that? I’d take it!
Meanwhile, the pests are advancing – this time the wallabies.
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