That’s the trees, but the it’s the whole ecosystem. Stoats, rats and other predators are decimating the wildlife populations too.
When you take key elements out of an ecosystem the whole thing is affected and not necessarily in ways that nature can accommodate well. Evolution is a thing, and where species have co-evolved, you get climax forests and stable systems. When you introduce elements that intervene in that outside of the evolutionary processes, you potentially get collapse. If even we thought that evolution will sort that out over the next centuries or millenia this is not something we want happening in the age of climate change.
Those Northland forests could be protected with the knowledge and skill we have now. Political choices from National mean they’re not.
Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding. Personally I’d prefer trapping over poisoning (including job and small business creation in the context of kaitiakitanga) but we have the poisoning tech too.
Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding.
How many thousands of people out there minding how many millions of traps?
Should we give them guns and ammo to shoot the pests if they see any?
It’s not funding either, it’s actual physical capability. If we want to eradicate the pests that were introduced then it’s going to have to be a major concerted effort across the whole country over a short period of time and make sure we get the whole damn lot of them. And the chances are that we’d miss some which means that in a few short years we’d bee doing it all again.
Me, I’m hoping that our scientists will develop a way to sterilise them all. Then we may have a chance to eradicate them. Unfortunately, this governments been cutting research through the stupidity of competition.
We’re never going to eradicate those pests on the mainland (at least not in the foreseeable future). In order to save the forests, we don’t need eradication, we just need to keep the numbers down low enough for species and systems to thrive above reproduction level.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time around trappers and in country more difficult than Northland forests. It takes surprisingly little to control a population in a given area. DOC and other govt organisations will have the research on this, but often even just having trap lines every x kms that get checked once a month can bring populations down enough for bird species to increase. You need to do extra in mast years. 1080 every decade or two if you have to. That research would have been done with a close eye on budgets (ie what’s the least amount of trapping we can do for the most effect), so giving them a decent budget instead of a minimal one would increase benefit substantially.
Put together small teams of people who are self employed, who love spending time in the bush, let them live in the forest with a caretaking contract so they can do other work there too. They can make a living from the possum fur and a bounty on the stoat and rats. Huge potential. We already have volunteer networks in NZ doing trapping, so co-ordinate and increase that eg DOC or Landcare or whoever put in the lines and registered volunteers who are already in the area (trampers, fishermen, climbers etc) do the line checks. These aren’t difficult things, they just need vision and funding.
my auntie was a possum trapper, one of my cousins partners and another cousin are full time possum trappers in the deep south, I have been a part time possum trapper – it is hard work.
It can be done but you have to be very fit, smart, dedicated and basically not have any qualms about killing stuff.
Could be that those qualities are in abundance out there with the not-employed – but it ain’t a video game and it is hard work even on easy country let alone hills.
Yeah, the biggest obstacle after funding and will is that we don’t have the same numbers of young guys coming through who go out and learn the trade. I guess I envisage us as a population having more physical lives in a post-carbon world, so may as well start now 🙂
At least some of the people I know that do it love being in the bush. I think that would be key. Getting to live in the wilderness would be a pretty big attraction.
That’s one of the major reasons we now have the luxury of pest free islands and some of our native birds haven’t become extinct.
It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.
I’m not a great fan of 1080, but it is pretty effective in restoring bird populations where it’s used appropriately.
The comparison with the 50s is not that useful because how, where and when 1080 is used has changed so much.
Spread of pests is complex. Possums and deer will spread faster and more where you open up areas with tracks and roads. Some of it is just time. It takes time for a population to expand out of its range.
If you 1080 every 3 or 4 years in the same place, those areas end up with a low levels of pests. We only do 1080 on a tiny fraction of the DoC estate, so it could clearly be increased by a lot.
“It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.”
You do selected ridgelines, and you do the line once a month. I don’t know Northland but I’m guessing it’s not harder than country down south.
1080 is useful, but it’s also got problems. I think it’s a mistake to rely on it as the main approach indefinitely across all native ecosystems (and increasingly across farmland).
I think that was the issue with possum trapping historically is that trappers would do the easy country all the time. It got rid of some possums, but the issue was that it wasn’t getting conservation benefits on the whole as there was plenty of country that still wasn’t getting pest control. I’ve been involved in pest control work and bait lines are about 50-100m apart with each bait station on the line about the same distance apart.
With bait stations you only have to check/refill every six months, and they contain a couple of hundred pellets in each one – I’m not sure how many rats/possums that kills, probably a lot. And you get complete coverage of an area so long as they’re laid out in a grid over the land.
With trapping, I’m assuming we’re talking leg-hold traps you’re only targetting possums as they’re the only thing of value. Rats are at least as big a problem as possums and they’re missed out. DoC does have the new Goodnature self-reseting traps that can kill 24 rats before they need a new gas cannister. That could be a way forward. Have they been used successfully in a large area like a Regional Park? Not sure.
In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters). Or maybe if helicopter use was prioritised for critical things like conservation we could carry on for another 50-100 years, who knows. In the long term I think we’re looking at only being able to manage pests in critical areas and close to population centres where people can access on foot using basic traps. The rest of the country might be unmanageable. Hope I’m wrong, but that could be the reality.
Any reason you can’t put out kill traps for the mustelids and rodents at the same time as doing the possum line? The Goodnature traps sound good, and I’m sure if there was more of a will there would more tech like that developped.
Let people live in the parks. It changes the ratios hugely.
Yeah that would be a good way to work it. The Goodnature people happened to be the right people (industrial designers) looking at the problem of an archaic trap that DoC was using – the Doc 200 trap is still in use and it looks as if it was designed in the 1800s. The company got some grants a long the way, but it doesn’t appear it was targetted research. So yeah I think we’re just scratching the surface really without proper research funding.
I’m with you on having people living in Forests, Parks. The european approach has been to lock these places these up and people are only allowed to look, not touch. Contrary to what native cultures do, which is to actually live in the environment.
In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters).
In a post carbon world you’d probably shift to using airships for the aerial drops of 1080. Bio-fuel and helium would mean that they’d still be practical.
There are some pretty interesting regulations around experimental aircraft above a trivial mass. Additionally, with airships the basics are easily done, but the control issues are pretty severe (especially for smaller blimps). Large sail area compared to mass/momentum. Sort of sucks in windy mountainous terrain.
It’s definitely a feasible idea – I immediately went to a sort of blimp roomba, dropping 1080 on a regular GPS run and returning to an automatic hopper station to refill/refuel. Payload a few times the size of a helicopter.
Whether that works for anyting approaching NZ weather and terrain, on the other hand… that’s what R&D is for 🙂
Great idea Pat. As Gareth says, who has the balls to sell and action an idea. It would cost Gareth and Key so are they for it?
The top 10% have the power to block and humiliate any possible proposers. And yet 90% of the people would benefit as would the Economy.
Deceitful fucks. Is all I call it DT. Peters said same thing it’s deceitful.
He sells assets and tells the nation it will be used for, then doesn’t give too shits about sticking to his promises and does what the fuck he likes.
Imagine if an agent sold your car for 5k, had instructions to use the money for another car but spent half the money on himself and only paid a deposit on the car you wanted.
When are these jerks hitting the road to campaign.
Now Bennetts admitted she lied about the sally visit.
Oh come on, time for a snap election or the dissolution of parliament , governor general stepping in. this has become absolutely ridiculous. Bordering insighting anarchy and civil unrest.
I bloody sick of this, and ready to act I can assure you.
The troops are advancing into NATO member Lithuania for the operation, but are heading in the general direction of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, a clear message that the operation is a simulation of a NATO invasion of Russian territory.
Anyone would think that the West wanted a war with Russia.
Oh, and then there’s this bit:
The biggest concern among NATO officials is the involvement of Poland’s “territorial army,” a makeshift paramilitary force built of gun club members and soccer hooligans. Two brigades of such forces are to “assist” in the operation.
National 48% (down from 50)
Labour 29% (up from 28)
Greens 12% (up from 10)
NZ First 9%
Maori Party 0.7% (down from 1.1)
Conservative Party 0.7% (up from 0.3)
ACT Party 0.3% (down from 0.7)
Other 0.6% (up from 0,2)
Polling was done between 28th of May and 2nd of June, the MoU announcement part way through so can’t take much from that.
Preferred Prime Minister:
John Key 39%
Winston Peters 12% (up from 10)
Andrew Little 7%
Colmar Brunton has frequently had LAB + GR at the low to mid 40’s several times recently, this poll basically returns to that recent ‘norm’ after the prior poll went a bit low on the LAB/GR block:
This poll, together with the last 3 Roy Morgans reinforces my hunch that the latest (April 2016) Colmar Brunton was a bit of an Outlier / Rogue.
All 10 of the Reid Research and Colmar Brunton Polls carried out since May 2015 have placed the Oppo Bloc ahead of the Govt … except for the April 2016 CB which swung from a 2 point Oppo lead in February to a 5 point Govt lead in April. The other 4 polls since February (3 RMs / 1 RR) have all placed the Opposition Bloc ahead by between 2 and 8 points.
All of which means … I await the next Colmar Brunton with interest.
This latest poll just solidifies that result i.e. LAB + GR are sitting at low to mid 40s.
Low to mid forties this far out is all good . if it starts to shift to the mid 40s and higher in the new year we might see key go for an early election.
The finer print of the poll separates the results into pre and post MoU, and post MoU it shows Labour support increasing by 5.2%, Greens dropping by 3.5%, Nat increasing by 1.9% and NZF dropping by 4.1%. So pretty much break even between Lab/Gr and Nat post MoU. NZF took a big hit though. Shown on page 9 of the report:
the big Australian storm hit Tassie today, more loss of life, catastrophic floods, evacuations. As in the Sydney storm, rescue crews are saying that too many people are doing daft things which diverts workers away from other work to rescue them. I wonder if this is an emerging extreme weather phenomena. People getting caught out more because of the severity, more people not knowing what are good decisions, and just a higher percentage of wrong place wrong time.
They need something like an electronic anti-rescue beacon bracelet. If something happens to them while adventuring during an extreme weather event no-one has to come to the rescue if shit goes south.
very much like the geezers in their four wheel drives. Innit?
I would assume that the security and first emergency team is privately employed. Each team comes with their own first response team. At the end of the day the guys that do the sport will not care, and at this level of skill and danger you need a specialised team to do rescue work.
Not really. Pretty sure the 4WD dudes were just regular people, not extreme sportspeople. And they didn’t go out to adventure in an extreme weather event that was a civil emergency, they got caught out by a fairly normal weather pattern (just like motorists and the NZTA elsewhere that day)
Sorry weka, but I wouldn’t have called the weather pattern that day fairly normal, and somewhere “regular people” would have prudently gone. What happened was pretty much to my reading of the forecast. What happened elsewhere, like on Crown Range was resolved from a personal safety perspective within minutes. There’s absolutely no comparison there.
RIght, but just a fairly normal storm for Central. Not a climate change extreme weather event like Australia has just experienced?
The sub thread is that I commented that extreme sportspeople who intentionally go out to play during a civil emergency could cede their right to rescue services that are needed elsewhere (I support their right to play). Sabine then said it was the same as the 4WD dudes. I think the situations are completely different, for multiple reasons, some of which I’ve explained. I don’t really need to rehash the 4WD situation (you and I will probably have to agree to disagree on their degree of idiocy and culpability there, my main point in the past has been that they shouldn’t be charged for the rescue). I was just clarifying that that was a normal weather even for May in Central.
Sorry, and thanks for the clarification. I took your comments to mean conditions were benign.
But in the same way that those conditions weren’t unusual for Central Otago, the south east coast of Australia is very exposed to high energy air masses from Coral Sea interacting with stuff from Southern Ocean. That’s how the sandstone cliffs along that coast have formed. They are relatively infrequent events, so the bold build their mansions out onto the sand dunes….
What is common between the two situations is inappropriate decisions people make in the actual or possible danger, as you pointed out in your original post. And the difficulty the same people have in taking responsibility for their poor decisions. It’s intriguing that the same people tend to inhabit the right of the political spectrum.
It’s this disconnect that makes meaningful discussion on pre-emptive actions to avert climate change almost impossible. I await the awarding of the Darwin Award to a denier for demise due to climatic events.
It does seem like a good opportunity to talk about changing risk assessment in a climate change world. I think there is the modern problem of people taking risks because they have 4WDs and cell phones, risks they wouldn’t have taken back in the day. And people who think they know how to do something because they’ve read about it on the internet and we live in a culture where you learn how to use tools from reading a Mitre10 tutorial instead of in the past when we learnt from people who knew how to actually do things. All that is a potent mix for people doing stupid shit.
When I read through some of the Sydney reports the emergecny crews were saying again and again how often they had to go and rescue people from stupid situations when they were needed elsewhere. We’ve always had people who do stupid or ignorant things (been there myself), but I think the numbers are greater now. And more people are less experienced at dealing with nature.
I remember floods and snow storms from the 60’s to 80’s, and they were real rippers, like delivering milk and bread in a jet boat, and Invercargill under water. People took responsibility for themselves and helped others, and got on with it.
Today it’s all the fault of someone or something, come and rescue me. The media narrative around Global Warming feeds this to an extent by narrowing what is “normal” and defining events with statistical return periods of 50 years as abnormal. And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.
I’m not saying that global warming isn’t a very real thing, but that the appreciation and respect of our weather’s variability and power is being eroded responsibility put to “someone else”
And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.
Wrong. Those are just the day by day records of weather. But any exceptional weather is pushed into the geology and the living organisms. That is literally what causes flood plains and erosion. Normal weather doesn’t do that much. Exceptional weather does.
We have accurate climate records for extreme weather about the last 20 thousand years for most of the world with an accuracy down to about a 20-50 year level depending of area, and moderately inaccurate for about the last couple of million years. It gets pretty inaccurate (ie about 50k years) after that.
Basically we haven’t seen anything like this since the Eocene about 34 million years ago, and we only have an accuracy in the order of 100k years then. This looks freakingly fast climate change.
Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…
Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…
As far as I can tell, we are going to beat 2 deg C warming over the pre-industrial baseline, in the next 10 years.
If Global Dimming particulate solar shielding effects disappeared, we would already be there.
And now we are consistently over 400ppm CO2, we have basically gone back 15M years. During the mid Miocene. And the temp then was way hotter than 2 deg C over the pre-industrial baseline.
The thermal inertia of the system means we won’t feel the full heat of today’s 405ppm for half a generation. Fun times.
a. we don’t have enough full time emergency staff to cope with the increase of natural emergencies, and all services are having a hard time finding volunteers.
b. we don’t have a population that is prepared to a. look after themselves in case of an emergency or b. be able to volunteer and help the emergency services.
c. check for auckland – i.e. emergency shelters – we will be told where to shelter when the emergency is ongoing – does that make you feel safer? The same can be said for anywhere else in NZ>
As i said in another thread, these are not free services, we are not well prepared here or anywhere else on the planet
I am not saying this to be uppity or aggravating, but as I have stated it before, we – the civilians – are pretty much fucked if we were to have a proper storm/flood/tsunami etc.
As for idiots needing saving …..we don’t need a storm for that, we already have them on any given sunday, see last discussions we had.
I’m pretty much on board with all that. I expect a certain amount from civil defence but generally assume they will be overwhelmed by a big event. If it’s s traumatic event like a quake expect some of them to be traumatised too.
I am curious about the number of people in Sydney that got into trouble and how many were just caught out and how many were trying to save possessions or thought they’d just get through that bit of flood so they didn’t have to spend a night away from home, that kind of thing.
Great. Hollywood has decided it will make a film about the Persian poet, mystic and scholar Rumi to address Muslim stereotypes in film, by casting Euro-Americans in the lead roles (not that that will be the limit of their imperialism).
“Politicians keep saying they are concerned but their actions, or lack of them, drown out their words. Any one of the analyses of how the latest budget failed the reef is enough to confirm this. Perhaps most astonishing in this shameful chapter in reef guardianship, the federal government tried to cover up what was happening by removing reef-related observations from a UN report.”
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Pity the poor Brits. They just can’t catch a break. After years of reporting of lying Boris Johnson, a change to a less colourful PM in Rishi Sunak has resulted in a smooth media pivot to an end-of-empire narrative. The New York Times, no less, amplifies suggestions that Blighty ...
On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth.Genesis 6:11-12THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS that dumped a record-breaking amount of rain on Auckland this anniversary weekend will reoccur with ever-increasing frequency. The planet’s atmosphere is ...
Buzz from the Beehive There has been plenty to keep the relevant Ministers busy in flood-stricken Auckland over the past day or two. But New Zealand, last time we looked, extends north of Auckland into Northland and south of the Bombay Hills all the way to the bottom of the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters When early settlers came to the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers before the California Gold Rush, Indigenous people warned them that the Sacramento Valley could become an inland sea when great winter rains came. The storytellers described water filling the ...
Wayne Brown managed a smile when meeting with Remuera residents, but he was grumpy about having to deal with “media drongos”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: In my pick of the news links found in my rounds since 4am for paying subscribers below the paywall:Wayne Brown moans about the media and ...
Wayne Brown managed a smile when meeting with Remuera residents, but he was grumpy about having to deal with “media drongos”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: In my pick of the news links found in my rounds since 4am for paying subscribers below the paywall:Wayne Brown moans about the media and ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins ...
Hipkins’ aim this year will be to present a ‘low target’ for those seeking to attack Labour’s policies and spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Anyone dealing with Government departments and councils who wants some sort of big or long-term decision out of officials or politicians this year should brace for ...
Hipkins’ aim this year will be to present a ‘low target’ for those seeking to attack Labour’s policies and spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Anyone dealing with Government departments and councils who wants some sort of big or long-term decision out of officials or politicians this year should brace for ...
Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins has changed everything, and Labour is back ...
Over the last few years, it’s seemed like city after city around the world has become subject to extreme flooding events that have been made worse by impacts from climate change. We’ve highlighted many of them in our Weekly Roundup series. Sadly, over the last few days it’s been Auckland’s ...
And so the first month of the year draws to a close. It rained in Auckland on 21 out of the 31 days in January. Feels like summer never really happened this year. It’s actually hard to believe there were 10 days that it didn’t rain. Was it any better where ...
A ‘small target’ strategy is not going to cut it anymore if National want to win the upcoming election. The game has changed and the game plan needs to change as well. Jacinda Ardern’s abrupt departure from the 9th floor has the potential to derail what looked to be an ...
When Grant Robertson talks about how the economy might change post-covid, one of the things he talks about is what he calls an unsung but interesting white paper on science. “It’s really important,” he says. The Minister in charge of the White Paper — Te Ara Paerangi, Future Pathways ...
The clean up has begun but more rain is on the way. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Auckland’s floods over the last three days are turning into a macroeconomic event, with losses from Aotearoa’s biggest-ever climate event estimated at around $500 million and Auckland’s schools all closed for a week until ...
The clean up has begun but more rain is on the way. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Auckland’s floods over the last three days are turning into a macroeconomic event, with losses from Aotearoa’s biggest-ever climate event estimated at around $500 million and Auckland’s schools all closed for a week until ...
The news media were at one ceremony by the looks of things. The Governor-General, the Prime Minister and his deputy were at another. The news media were at a swearing-in ceremony. The country’s leaders were at an appointment ceremony. The New Zealand Gazette record of what transpired says: Appointment of ...
I n some alternative universe, Auckland mayor Efeso Collins readily grasped the scale of Friday’s deluge, and quickly made the emergency declaration that enabled central government to immediately throw its resources behind the rescue and remediation effort. As Friday evening became night, Mayor Collins seemed to be everywhere: talking with ...
They called it an “atmospheric river”, the weather bombardment which hit NZ’s northern region at the weekend. It exacted a terrible toll on metropolitan Auckland and the rest of the region. Few living there may have noted a statement from electricity generator Mercury Energy labelled “WET, WET, WET!” This was ...
I know, that is a pretty corny title but given the circumstances here in the Auckland region, I just had to say it. The more oblique reference embedded in the title is to the leadership failures exhibited by Mayor Wayne Brown and his so-called leadership team when confronted by the ...
How much confidence should the public have in authorities managing natural disasters? Not much, judging by the farcical way in which the civil defence emergence in Auckland has played out. The way authorities dealt with Auckland’s extreme weather on Friday illustrated how hit-and-miss our civil defence emergency system is. In ...
TLDR: Here’s the key news links and useful longer reads I’ve spotted since 4 am this morning, including:calls for a more ‘spongey’ urban infrastructure after Auckland’s floods;demands for an inquiry into Auckland Council’s communications failure;the latest on Chris Hipkins’ plans for Three Waters; inside the PR trainwreck that is Wayne ...
TLDR: Here’s the key news links and useful longer reads I’ve spotted since 4 am this morning, including:calls for a more ‘spongey’ urban infrastructure after Auckland’s floods;demands for an inquiry into Auckland Council’s communications failure;the latest on Chris Hipkins’ plans for Three Waters; inside the PR trainwreck that is Wayne ...
Mayor Wayne Brown, under fire for his communication failures, quietly visited the scene of the fatal Remuera slip on Sunday, with his staff taking photos for social media updates. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: The cleanup and the post-mortem have begun, even though the rain just keeps falling in Auckland after ...
Mayor Wayne Brown, under fire for his communication failures, quietly visited the scene of the fatal Remuera slip on Sunday, with his staff taking photos for social media updates. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: The cleanup and the post-mortem have begun, even though the rain just keeps falling in Auckland after ...
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The recent leadership change in the governing Labour party resulted in a very strange response from National’s (current) leader, Christopher Luxon. Mr Luxon berated Labour for it’s change of leader, citing no actual change.As ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 22, 2023 thru Sat, Jan 28, 2023. Story of the Week New Study Reveals Arctic Ice, Tracked Both Above and Below, Is Freezing LaterClimate change is affecting the timing of both ...
We’ve just announced a massive infrastructure investment to kick-start new housing developments across New Zealand. Through our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, we’re making sure that critical infrastructure - like pipes, roads and wastewater connections - is in place, so thousands more homes can be built. ...
The Green Party is joining more than 20 community organisations to call for an immediate rent freeze in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, after reports of landlords intending to hike rents after flooding. ...
When Chris Hipkins took on the job of Prime Minister, he said bread and butter issues like the cost of living would be the Government’s top priority – and this week, we’ve set out extra support for families and businesses. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to provide direct support to low-income households and to stop subsidising fossil fuels during a climate crisis. ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Over $10 million infrastructure funding to unlock housing in Whangārei The purchase of a 3.279 hectare site in Kerikeri to enable 56 new homes Northland becomes eligible for $100 million scheme for affordable rentals Multiple Northland communities will benefit from multiple Government housing investments, delivering thousands of new homes for ...
A memorial event at a key battle site in the New Zealand land wars is an important event to mark the progress in relations between Māori and the Crown as we head towards Waitangi Day, Minister for Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis said. The Battle of Ohaeawai in June 1845 saw ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 54 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. The graduation ceremony for Recruit Wing 362 at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua was the first official event for Stuart Nash since his reappointment as Police ...
The Government is unlocking an additional $700,000 in support for regions that have been badly hit by the recent flooding and storm damage in the upper North Island. “We’re supporting the response and recovery of Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland, and Bay of Plenty regions, through activating Enhanced Taskforce Green to ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has welcomed the announcement that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand this month. “Princess Anne is travelling to Aotearoa at the request of the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief, to ...
A new Government and industry strategy launched today has its sights on growing the value of New Zealand’s horticultural production to $12 billion by 2035, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said. “Our food and fibre exports are vital to New Zealand’s economic security. We’re focussed on long-term strategies that build on ...
25 cents per litre petrol excise duty cut extended to 30 June 2023 – reducing an average 60 litre tank of petrol by $17.25 Road User Charge discount will be re-introduced and continue through until 30 June Half price public transport fares extended to the end of June 2023 saving ...
The strong economy has attracted more people into the workforce, with a record number of New Zealanders in paid work and wages rising to help with cost of living pressures. “The Government’s economic plan is delivering on more better-paid jobs, growing wages and creating more opportunities for more New Zealanders,” ...
The Government is providing a further $1 million to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Cabinet today agreed that, given the severity of the event, a further $1 million contribution be made. Cabinet wishes to be proactive ...
The new Cabinet will be focused on core bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing and keeping communities and businesses safe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced. “We need a greater focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now. The new Cabinet line ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to Canberra next week for an in person meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “The trans-Tasman relationship is New Zealand’s closest and most important, and it was crucial to me that my first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to Australia,” Chris Hipkins ...
The Government is providing establishment funding of $100,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “We moved quickly to make available this funding to support Aucklanders while the full extent of the damage is being assessed,” Kieran McAnulty ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
COMMENTARY:By Kayt Davies in Perth I wasn’t good at French in my final year of high school. My classmates had five years of language studies behind them. I had three. As a result of my woeful grip on the language, I wrote a terribly bad essay in my final ...
RNZ Pacific Journalist Victor Mambor, who is the chief editor of the West Papuan newspaper and websiteJubi, has received the Oktovianus Pogau Award from the Indonesian-based Pantau Foundation for courage in journalism. The foundation’s Andreas Harsono said Mambor’s decision to return to his father’s homeland and defend the rights ...
RNZ News Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick is brushing off concerns a temporary rent freeze in flood-hit Auckland would just see landlords hike rents even more when the controls were lifted — arguing they should stay permanently. More than 20 organisations have signed a letter urging Minister for Auckland Michael ...
Iwi leaders have accused National and ACT of "fanning the flames of racism", urging the prime minister to be brave and not walk away from partnership on three waters. ...
About this time last week it had become apparent that Auckland was in for a bit more than just a wet Friday. While the state of emergency remains in place for another seven days, it appears the worst should now be behind us. Last night, Niwa shared a fascinating thread ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra ShutterstockIndigenous Australians are respectfully advised that the following includes the names and images of some people who are now deceased. The Reserve Bank of Australia ...
The government has confirmed the money will be spent in Northland, including unlocking greenfields land and transport upgrades like a new bridge in Kamo. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW Sydney Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that sometime between August and November this year, the Australian people will go to a referendum for the first time since 1999. We’ll be asked whether we support ...
Viewers across the United States were today shown a slice of New Zealand, with a reporter for Good Morning America broadcasting live from Rotorua. Robin Roberts, a co-anchor for the popular morning TV show, has been touring the country this week. During her visit to Rotorua’s Te Puia centre, she ...
They can be environmentally unsound and are a symbol used to shame millennials, but everyone still loves an avo. I love avocados, always have, always will. The buttery golden-green flesh from a perfectly ripe avocado is a culinary blessing. Today I’d love to simply wax poetic about twisting open a ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (Penguin Press, $50) The beautiful ...
A new poem by Robin Peace. To the kahikatea I see from my bed Thinking inside the square, the ellipse, the round of what life is, I only see the trees. Not only as if that were the only thing I see, but only as if the tree matters more. ...
A week ago, Elton John’s first Auckland show was called off at the last minute. What was it like getting there, being there, and trying to return home afterwards?Elton John has long been a blessing for our ears, but in recent years his Auckland shows have been cursed. His ...
For Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, sorry seems to be the hardest word to say The mayoral chains must have been heavy this week for Auckland’s Wayne Brown, as his response to last week’s flood garnered its own veritable torrent of scandals and media scrutiny. Almost exactly one week on from ...
For Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, sorry seems to be the hardest word to say The mayoral chains must have been heavy this week for Auckland’s Wayne Brown, as his response to last week’s flood garnered its own veritable torrent of scandals and media scrutiny. Almost exactly one week on from ...
Ours Not Mines is cautiously excited about reporting that the Government is drafting legislation to ban new mines on conservation land. The anti-mining group's spokesperson, Morgan Donoghue says: "The Government has been promising us some action for ...
People who enjoy the outdoors for recreation, fishing and hunting will lose rights under the Natural and Built Environments Bill. Fish & Game New Zealand chief executive Corina Jordan says the proposed replacement for the Resource Management ...
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has conceded he “dropped the ball” during last Friday’s major flooding event. The state of emergency in the super city has today been extended for a further seven days, though Brown said he expects it will be lifted early. After a week of defensiveness over his ...
As the reality TV juggernaut returns for a new season, Tara Ward steps into the minds of the show’s relationship experts to assess the compatibility of this year’s brides and grooms. Married at First Sight: Australia returns on Monday night, and by season ten, you’d think the show’s relationship experts ...
Auckland’s state of emergency is expected to be extended for another seven days, according to the Herald. It was due to expire overnight after being declared a week ago, the day of the worst flooding in the super city. While weather conditions have improved, the city is continuing to experience ...
Proposed pay equity claim settlements for school librarians and science technicians have been reached between the Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa, Secretary for Education, Iona Holsted and NZEI Te Riu Roa president, Mark Potter, announced ...
Members of NZEI Te Riu Roa negotiating on behalf of school librarians, library assistants and science technicians are excited to announce that proposed pay equity settlements are ready to be voted on by their colleagues. They include pay increases of up to ...
The Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) is calling for Michael Wood, the Minister of Transport, and now Auckland, to cancel the light rail project immediately. Auckland Light Rail was never going to happen, as our group has repeatedly said dozens of ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been asked to intervene following confirmation today that the Government plans to implement a ban on all extractive sector activities on the conservation estate. Wayne Scott, CEO of the Aggregate and Quarry Association, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images The heated (and often confused) debate about “co-governance” in Aotearoa New Zealand inevitably leads back to its source, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. But, as its long-contested meanings demonstrate, very little ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Hunter, Lecturer in Art and Performance, Deakin University Jodie Hutchinson/Red StitchReview: Wittenoom, directed by Susie Dee, Red Stitch Deep in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia, the town of Wittenoom lies empty, desolate … and contaminated. Wittenoom ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oliver Bown, Postdoctoral fellow, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock The past few years have seen an explosion in applications of artificial intelligence to creative fields. A new generation of image and text generators is delivering impressiveresults. Now AI has also found ...
New Zealand’s egg shortage is hitting cruise ships too – forcing the crew of one vessel to hatch a poaching plan. This story was first published on Stuff. On the hunt for eggs, a crew from a luxury cruise ship got cracking and hatched a cunning plan. Earlier this week, Stuff ...
Now demolished, the First Church of Christ Scientist was a masterclass of architectural imagination. Kate Linzey visits the site on which it once stood, to learn more. The object is delicate and small. Small enough to sit in the palm of my hand and weighing less than 300 grams. It ...
When your food parcel arrives before the emergency alert, you know something’s not working properly.This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. I’ve spent the last week desperately and at times fruitlessly attempting to drain and then sweep my whānau home of knee-deep water, pull up ...
Drongo-gate continues for another day with the Herald reporting that Auckland’s mayor has been caught out using the slang term for a second time. It comes this time from a former minor mayoral candidate, Mike Kampkes, who said he received a message from Brown in response to a media release ...
How does Aotearoa stop relying so heavily on agriculture to prop up our economy? Online tax and accounting service Hnry just raised $35m to grow its software on-demand service across the globe. Bernard Hickey talks with AirTree partner Jackie Vullinghs about how venture capitalists are funding Aotearoa’s fastest growing, least-polluting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney Shutterstock With childcare and schools starting the new year, parents might be anxiously wondering how their child will adapt in a new ...
I am delighted to announce the appointment of John Price ONZM as the new Director Civil Defence Emergency Management and Deputy Chief Executive Emergency Management for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). John has been a member of the ...
Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki are calling on the new Prime Minister and new Minister of Conservation Willow Jean Prime to immediately implement the 2017 promise to ban new mining activity on conservation lands. “ The mining industry group Straterra ...
How does Aotearoa stop relying so heavily on agriculture to prop up our economy? Online tax and accounting service Hnry just raised $35m to grow its software on-demand service across the globe. In the latest episode of When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks with AirTree partner Jackie Vullinghs about how ...
There’s a fear that highlighting menopause will undermine women, especially at work. But what have centuries of secrecy achieved for us? Are you sick of hearing about menopause? Kim Hill is. The living legend of Aotearoa broadcasting told actor Robyn Malcolm (also a legend) on her Saturday Morning show on RNZ ...
Dunedin city council has reached an agreement to save Foulden Maar from commercial mining. The maar is the site of a crater lake from 23 million years ago with the diatomite of the lake preserving fossils and a climate record covering 100,000 years from that period. It is fantastic news for Otago University ...
Some are speculating whether the Auckland Mayor's leadership is circling the drain. James Elliott hopes they're right. There’s never been a week quite like it. It was the week when the rains came. All of them. Even the rain from Spain that was supposed to fall mainly on the plain, came. ...
The Bus and Coach Association supports the Government’s decision to continue half-price fares on public transport services. The fare reduction was set to expire on 31 March 2023, but will now continue to 30 June 2023. “Half-price fares have cost ten-times ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Hipkins’ bread and butter reshufflePolitical scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Chris Hipkins hires a lobbyist to run the BeehiveNew Zealand Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, speaking when Minister of Education, at NZEI Te Riu Roa strike rally on the steps of the New Zealand Parliament, 15th August 2018. Image; Wiki Commons. New Zealand is ...
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project. Items of interest and importance todayCO-GOVERNANCE, WAITANGI, THREE WATERS Chris Trotter (Daily Blog): Blowing Off The Froth: Why Chris Hipkins Must Ditch ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Tweed, Senior lecturer, Massey University Shutterstock/Renata Apanaviciene As we approach another Waitangi Day, we should be thinking again about what Te Tiriti o Waitangi means. As the late Moana Jackson commented, the meaning of Te Tiriti will be ...
Even prime ministers get caught in bad weather. It’s a week on from the devastating flooding that hit Auckland and Northland and Chris Hipkins has been forced to drive north for the start of Waitangi weekend commemorations after his plan was turned away from Kerikeri airport (twice). Today will see ...
Less than a year ago, co-governance had a future, at least as potentially accepted terminology. Now some iwi leaders want the label removed and replaced, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
“The decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia to not replace the late Queen with Charles on the Aussie $5 note should indicate to our Reserve Bank that it’s time to change the NZ $20 note” said Lewis Holden, campaign chair of New ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Wolf, Associate Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australian National University Somchat Parkaythong/Shutterstock Black holes are bizarre things, even by the standards of astronomers. Their mass is so great, it bends space around them so tightly that nothing can escape, even ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Revell, Associate Professor in Environmental Physics, University of Canterbury Getty Images The ozone layer is on track to heal within four decades, according to a recent UN report, but this progress could be undone by an upsurge in rocket ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Clune, Honorary Associate, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney At the New South Wales election on March 25 a 12-year-old Coalition government will be seeking re-election. Hoping to return as premier is Liberal leader Dominic Perrottet – a political conservative ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Trauer, Associate Professor, Monash University Anastelfy/Shutterstock The XBB.1.5 subvariant, known informally as “Kraken”, is the latest in a menagerie of Omicron subvariants to dominate the headlines, following increasing detection in the United States and United Kingdom. But there ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeline Combe, Doctoral student, University of Technology Sydney Shutterstock As the economist Herman Daly pithily said, the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment – not the reverse. Nature makes our lives possible through what scientists call ecosystem ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Jefferson, Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock Grit. Don’t quit. That’s the mantra many parents may have in mind when they, like me, spend what feels like years ferrying children to a seemingly endless variety of sports and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW Sydney Sam Shere/Wikimedia Commons A few weeks ago, Gautam Adani was indisputably India’s richest man. Now his fortune is slipping away as the stocks of his many companies crash, thanks to the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology Shutterstock Have you ever found yourself scrolling through social media and noticed you felt a bit down? Maybe a little envious? Why aren’t you on a yacht? Running a startup? Looking ...
The science of ‘event attribution’ is growing, with researchers working to accelerate their assessments. A leading NZ climate scientist tells Toby Manhire how it works, how climate change impacted the ‘off the chart’ weekend downpours, and why we can’t put a number on it tomorrow. Brutal, unexpected, record-breaking, destructive, tragic. ...
Those lockdown vibes are back – and maybe they never really went away. We were supposed to be organised. For a while there, we were. A uniform, purchased across a frenzied weekend dashing between specialist stores, was spread out over our son’s bed. Tags removed, shirts folded, socks in balls, ...
Establishing a Truth, Reconciliation and Justice Commission and recognising Māori tino rangatiratanga are among several recommendations in two pivotal reports released today (Friday 3 February) by Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission. The ...
Losing her mum at an early age, Ivari Christie found strength in netball. The explosive teen midcourter has now burst into the Southern Steel, with help from a couple of Silver Ferns legends, Suzanne McFadden writes. It was the biggest moment in Ivari Christie’s netball career; just 18 years old ...
The latest Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list, described by Steve BrauniasFICTION 1 Kāwai by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99) Huzzah to Monty Soutar, huzzah to his publishers, and huzzah to the three wise judges of the fiction prize at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand national book awards for ...
James Shaw says his Labour colleagues need to work with him to plug the emissions gap created by extending the fuel tax cuts Less than a week after a climate-fuelled storm laid waste to wide swathes of Auckland, the Government resurrected fossil fuel subsidies in the form of an extension ...
Jacinda Ardern was treated like royalty at Waitangi with people coming from near and far to see her every February. Newly minted Prime Minister Chris Hipkins isn’t a familiar face in the Far North and will have his work cut out this weekend, writes political editor Jo Moir.Analysis: About ...
By extending the fuel excise duty cut, the Government is encouraging people to drive more, which will only worsen the climate challenges we face in the very near futureOpinion: By most accounts, the storms that have been wreaking havoc in Auckland and Northland are fuelled by climate change. The ...
Is a sponge city the answer to Auckland's flooding woes? The Detail finds out what the concept is all about. With the cleanup in full swing all over Auckland after this week's catastrophic flooding, people are starting to talk about throwing out the old building rules and "unengineering" our city - ...
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For the people who think nature should be left to sort itself out, forests in Northland are on the verge of collapse from possum damage,
http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/stopforestcollapse
That’s the trees, but the it’s the whole ecosystem. Stoats, rats and other predators are decimating the wildlife populations too.
When you take key elements out of an ecosystem the whole thing is affected and not necessarily in ways that nature can accommodate well. Evolution is a thing, and where species have co-evolved, you get climax forests and stable systems. When you introduce elements that intervene in that outside of the evolutionary processes, you potentially get collapse. If even we thought that evolution will sort that out over the next centuries or millenia this is not something we want happening in the age of climate change.
Those Northland forests could be protected with the knowledge and skill we have now. Political choices from National mean they’re not.
Just another day in John Key’s neo-liberal nightmare.
We have become a cruel, selfish, uncaring and selfish nation under his wretched leadership.
DOC’s funding being cut and nature dies.
What knowledge and skill?
And don’t say traps because traps aren’t enough. If they were we would have sorted out the pests decades ago.
Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding. Personally I’d prefer trapping over poisoning (including job and small business creation in the context of kaitiakitanga) but we have the poisoning tech too.
How many thousands of people out there minding how many millions of traps?
Should we give them guns and ammo to shoot the pests if they see any?
It’s not funding either, it’s actual physical capability. If we want to eradicate the pests that were introduced then it’s going to have to be a major concerted effort across the whole country over a short period of time and make sure we get the whole damn lot of them. And the chances are that we’d miss some which means that in a few short years we’d bee doing it all again.
Me, I’m hoping that our scientists will develop a way to sterilise them all. Then we may have a chance to eradicate them. Unfortunately, this governments been cutting research through the stupidity of competition.
We’re never going to eradicate those pests on the mainland (at least not in the foreseeable future). In order to save the forests, we don’t need eradication, we just need to keep the numbers down low enough for species and systems to thrive above reproduction level.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time around trappers and in country more difficult than Northland forests. It takes surprisingly little to control a population in a given area. DOC and other govt organisations will have the research on this, but often even just having trap lines every x kms that get checked once a month can bring populations down enough for bird species to increase. You need to do extra in mast years. 1080 every decade or two if you have to. That research would have been done with a close eye on budgets (ie what’s the least amount of trapping we can do for the most effect), so giving them a decent budget instead of a minimal one would increase benefit substantially.
Put together small teams of people who are self employed, who love spending time in the bush, let them live in the forest with a caretaking contract so they can do other work there too. They can make a living from the possum fur and a bounty on the stoat and rats. Huge potential. We already have volunteer networks in NZ doing trapping, so co-ordinate and increase that eg DOC or Landcare or whoever put in the lines and registered volunteers who are already in the area (trampers, fishermen, climbers etc) do the line checks. These aren’t difficult things, they just need vision and funding.
my auntie was a possum trapper, one of my cousins partners and another cousin are full time possum trappers in the deep south, I have been a part time possum trapper – it is hard work.
It can be done but you have to be very fit, smart, dedicated and basically not have any qualms about killing stuff.
Could be that those qualities are in abundance out there with the not-employed – but it ain’t a video game and it is hard work even on easy country let alone hills.
Still, the possums have to go.
Yeah, the biggest obstacle after funding and will is that we don’t have the same numbers of young guys coming through who go out and learn the trade. I guess I envisage us as a population having more physical lives in a post-carbon world, so may as well start now 🙂
At least some of the people I know that do it love being in the bush. I think that would be key. Getting to live in the wilderness would be a pretty big attraction.
Full respect to you and your family for that commitment.
Helluva a lot more than I do for saving the forest.
Need a sexually transmitted disease that induces sterilization.
pretty good possibility – and farmers are unlikely to screw this one up.
lol hey hey there farmers aren’t THAT bad and remember they only love animals when it is really cold…
The news item I saw a few years ago was looking at that type of thing – yes.
Quite a few years ago and in the meantime we can use the tools we have to hand.
Hi weka, amen to trapping over poisoning.
No animal should die in such a cruel painful way as 1080 poison.
Put a bounty on possum ears $2, $4,$10…
There is enough money, just a lack of priorities.
A helicopter and buckets of 1080.
That’s one of the major reasons we now have the luxury of pest free islands and some of our native birds haven’t become extinct.
It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.
And we’ve been dropping 1080 since the 1950s. In that time the pests have spread throughout NZ.
I’m not a great fan of 1080, but it is pretty effective in restoring bird populations where it’s used appropriately.
The comparison with the 50s is not that useful because how, where and when 1080 is used has changed so much.
Spread of pests is complex. Possums and deer will spread faster and more where you open up areas with tracks and roads. Some of it is just time. It takes time for a population to expand out of its range.
If you 1080 every 3 or 4 years in the same place, those areas end up with a low levels of pests. We only do 1080 on a tiny fraction of the DoC estate, so it could clearly be increased by a lot.
“It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.”
You do selected ridgelines, and you do the line once a month. I don’t know Northland but I’m guessing it’s not harder than country down south.
1080 is useful, but it’s also got problems. I think it’s a mistake to rely on it as the main approach indefinitely across all native ecosystems (and increasingly across farmland).
I think that was the issue with possum trapping historically is that trappers would do the easy country all the time. It got rid of some possums, but the issue was that it wasn’t getting conservation benefits on the whole as there was plenty of country that still wasn’t getting pest control. I’ve been involved in pest control work and bait lines are about 50-100m apart with each bait station on the line about the same distance apart.
Are trap lines done the same as bait lines?
Trappers doing the easy country is a management issues, it’s solvable.
With bait stations you only have to check/refill every six months, and they contain a couple of hundred pellets in each one – I’m not sure how many rats/possums that kills, probably a lot. And you get complete coverage of an area so long as they’re laid out in a grid over the land.
With trapping, I’m assuming we’re talking leg-hold traps you’re only targetting possums as they’re the only thing of value. Rats are at least as big a problem as possums and they’re missed out. DoC does have the new Goodnature self-reseting traps that can kill 24 rats before they need a new gas cannister. That could be a way forward. Have they been used successfully in a large area like a Regional Park? Not sure.
In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters). Or maybe if helicopter use was prioritised for critical things like conservation we could carry on for another 50-100 years, who knows. In the long term I think we’re looking at only being able to manage pests in critical areas and close to population centres where people can access on foot using basic traps. The rest of the country might be unmanageable. Hope I’m wrong, but that could be the reality.
Any reason you can’t put out kill traps for the mustelids and rodents at the same time as doing the possum line? The Goodnature traps sound good, and I’m sure if there was more of a will there would more tech like that developped.
Let people live in the parks. It changes the ratios hugely.
Yeah that would be a good way to work it. The Goodnature people happened to be the right people (industrial designers) looking at the problem of an archaic trap that DoC was using – the Doc 200 trap is still in use and it looks as if it was designed in the 1800s. The company got some grants a long the way, but it doesn’t appear it was targetted research. So yeah I think we’re just scratching the surface really without proper research funding.
I’m with you on having people living in Forests, Parks. The european approach has been to lock these places these up and people are only allowed to look, not touch. Contrary to what native cultures do, which is to actually live in the environment.
In a post carbon world you’d probably shift to using airships for the aerial drops of 1080. Bio-fuel and helium would mean that they’d still be practical.
we should start using them now – where can you get them? can you build them?
There are some pretty interesting regulations around experimental aircraft above a trivial mass. Additionally, with airships the basics are easily done, but the control issues are pretty severe (especially for smaller blimps). Large sail area compared to mass/momentum. Sort of sucks in windy mountainous terrain.
It’s definitely a feasible idea – I immediately went to a sort of blimp roomba, dropping 1080 on a regular GPS run and returning to an automatic hopper station to refill/refuel. Payload a few times the size of a helicopter.
Whether that works for anyting approaching NZ weather and terrain, on the other hand… that’s what R&D is for 🙂
Draco the world is almost out of recoverable helium.
[citation needed]
helium is a bit of an issue, but for a drone airship dropping 1080 there’s no reason to not use hydrogen.
I just have the (incorrect) Hey hey my my lyric “and once they’re gone, they won’t come back…” going round my head about this…
Morgon Foundation gets it…..
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201803600/gareth-morgan-calls-for-tax-reform
watch the attacks now.
Great idea Pat. As Gareth says, who has the balls to sell and action an idea. It would cost Gareth and Key so are they for it?
The top 10% have the power to block and humiliate any possible proposers. And yet 90% of the people would benefit as would the Economy.
“who has the balls to sell and action an idea?”….. labour/green coalition perhaps
Nice article on Stuff about the slush fund . TV3 picked it up.. Shocking. Pitch fork time. Seriously.
Link?
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/asset-sales-cash-used-as-govt-slush-fund–peters-2016060713#axzz4AsLB1NRV
Bugger, so many news links, it was newshub surprisingly not stuff nor has Herald picked it up yeti.
The most beautiful woman in NZ the lovely Sam Hayes did a opening on TV3 news about Bill and his lies about our asset sales money.
Paraphrasing Blinglish:
Well, we didn’t have to borrow that money to pay for things…
How much has he borrowed so far due to the tax cuts?
And, of course, no government ever has to borrow money as they can, and should, just create it.
Deceitful fucks. Is all I call it DT. Peters said same thing it’s deceitful.
He sells assets and tells the nation it will be used for, then doesn’t give too shits about sticking to his promises and does what the fuck he likes.
Imagine if an agent sold your car for 5k, had instructions to use the money for another car but spent half the money on himself and only paid a deposit on the car you wanted.
When are these jerks hitting the road to campaign.
and in the news today…National Gov caught in a lie (yet again)……and in other news……
LMFAO, you were so right, then appears..
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/bennett-owns-up-to-misinformation-2016060719#axzz4AsLB1NRV
Now Bennetts admitted she lied about the sally visit.
Oh come on, time for a snap election or the dissolution of parliament , governor general stepping in. this has become absolutely ridiculous. Bordering insighting anarchy and civil unrest.
I bloody sick of this, and ready to act I can assure you.
If it wasn’t so damaging it would be funny….it certainly defies belief that they haven’t been dismissed as the bad joke they are ….as yet.
Surprise surprise, billy and johnny doing what they do best.
Wow 167 mil for membership for two international banks. Nice work if you can get it.
30,000 Troops Kick Off NATO’s Largest Eastern Europe War Game Ever, Will Practice Invading Russia’s Kaliningrad
Anyone would think that the West wanted a war with Russia.
Oh, and then there’s this bit:
Someone invited the gun nuts along for the ride.
One News Colmar Brunton poll for June 2016:
National 48% (down from 50)
Labour 29% (up from 28)
Greens 12% (up from 10)
NZ First 9%
Maori Party 0.7% (down from 1.1)
Conservative Party 0.7% (up from 0.3)
ACT Party 0.3% (down from 0.7)
Other 0.6% (up from 0,2)
Polling was done between 28th of May and 2nd of June, the MoU announcement part way through so can’t take much from that.
Preferred Prime Minister:
John Key 39%
Winston Peters 12% (up from 10)
Andrew Little 7%
http://colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/160607-ONE-News-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-28-May-2-June-2016-prelim.pdf
Doesn’t the Colmar-Brunton poll always have National 4+ percentage points above their actual support?
Yes
Trend is good. National down 2 Labour+Greens up 3.
Colmar Brunton has frequently had LAB + GR at the low to mid 40’s several times recently, this poll basically returns to that recent ‘norm’ after the prior poll went a bit low on the LAB/GR block:
Swordfish from a few weeks back:
This latest poll just solidifies that result i.e. LAB + GR are sitting at low to mid 40s.
Low to mid forties this far out is all good . if it starts to shift to the mid 40s and higher in the new year we might see key go for an early election.
I think the election is 14 months out any way.
The finer print of the poll separates the results into pre and post MoU, and post MoU it shows Labour support increasing by 5.2%, Greens dropping by 3.5%, Nat increasing by 1.9% and NZF dropping by 4.1%. So pretty much break even between Lab/Gr and Nat post MoU. NZF took a big hit though. Shown on page 9 of the report:
http://colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/160607-ONE-News-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-28-May-2-June-2016-prelim.pdf
the big Australian storm hit Tassie today, more loss of life, catastrophic floods, evacuations. As in the Sydney storm, rescue crews are saying that too many people are doing daft things which diverts workers away from other work to rescue them. I wonder if this is an emerging extreme weather phenomena. People getting caught out more because of the severity, more people not knowing what are good decisions, and just a higher percentage of wrong place wrong time.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-07/woman's-body-found-latrobe-tasmania-major-flooding-wreaks-havoc/7483726
Some people had a great time doing daft things.
http://www.redbullcapefear.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmSlHXbIb1A
They need something like an electronic anti-rescue beacon bracelet. If something happens to them while adventuring during an extreme weather event no-one has to come to the rescue if shit goes south.
very much like the geezers in their four wheel drives. Innit?
I would assume that the security and first emergency team is privately employed. Each team comes with their own first response team. At the end of the day the guys that do the sport will not care, and at this level of skill and danger you need a specialised team to do rescue work.
Not really. Pretty sure the 4WD dudes were just regular people, not extreme sportspeople. And they didn’t go out to adventure in an extreme weather event that was a civil emergency, they got caught out by a fairly normal weather pattern (just like motorists and the NZTA elsewhere that day)
Sorry weka, but I wouldn’t have called the weather pattern that day fairly normal, and somewhere “regular people” would have prudently gone. What happened was pretty much to my reading of the forecast. What happened elsewhere, like on Crown Range was resolved from a personal safety perspective within minutes. There’s absolutely no comparison there.
and no comparison with extreme sportspeople either.
What was out of the ordinary about the weather that day?
The storm was forecast, a heavy snow warning for Otago high country, and it looked like shit from late the day before.
They have also almost admitted that the poor conditions where the reason they went up there, for the challenge.
RIght, but just a fairly normal storm for Central. Not a climate change extreme weather event like Australia has just experienced?
The sub thread is that I commented that extreme sportspeople who intentionally go out to play during a civil emergency could cede their right to rescue services that are needed elsewhere (I support their right to play). Sabine then said it was the same as the 4WD dudes. I think the situations are completely different, for multiple reasons, some of which I’ve explained. I don’t really need to rehash the 4WD situation (you and I will probably have to agree to disagree on their degree of idiocy and culpability there, my main point in the past has been that they shouldn’t be charged for the rescue). I was just clarifying that that was a normal weather even for May in Central.
Sorry, and thanks for the clarification. I took your comments to mean conditions were benign.
But in the same way that those conditions weren’t unusual for Central Otago, the south east coast of Australia is very exposed to high energy air masses from Coral Sea interacting with stuff from Southern Ocean. That’s how the sandstone cliffs along that coast have formed. They are relatively infrequent events, so the bold build their mansions out onto the sand dunes….
What is common between the two situations is inappropriate decisions people make in the actual or possible danger, as you pointed out in your original post. And the difficulty the same people have in taking responsibility for their poor decisions. It’s intriguing that the same people tend to inhabit the right of the political spectrum.
It’s this disconnect that makes meaningful discussion on pre-emptive actions to avert climate change almost impossible. I await the awarding of the Darwin Award to a denier for demise due to climatic events.
It does seem like a good opportunity to talk about changing risk assessment in a climate change world. I think there is the modern problem of people taking risks because they have 4WDs and cell phones, risks they wouldn’t have taken back in the day. And people who think they know how to do something because they’ve read about it on the internet and we live in a culture where you learn how to use tools from reading a Mitre10 tutorial instead of in the past when we learnt from people who knew how to actually do things. All that is a potent mix for people doing stupid shit.
When I read through some of the Sydney reports the emergecny crews were saying again and again how often they had to go and rescue people from stupid situations when they were needed elsewhere. We’ve always had people who do stupid or ignorant things (been there myself), but I think the numbers are greater now. And more people are less experienced at dealing with nature.
I remember floods and snow storms from the 60’s to 80’s, and they were real rippers, like delivering milk and bread in a jet boat, and Invercargill under water. People took responsibility for themselves and helped others, and got on with it.
Today it’s all the fault of someone or something, come and rescue me. The media narrative around Global Warming feeds this to an extent by narrowing what is “normal” and defining events with statistical return periods of 50 years as abnormal. And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.
I’m not saying that global warming isn’t a very real thing, but that the appreciation and respect of our weather’s variability and power is being eroded responsibility put to “someone else”
Wrong. Those are just the day by day records of weather. But any exceptional weather is pushed into the geology and the living organisms. That is literally what causes flood plains and erosion. Normal weather doesn’t do that much. Exceptional weather does.
We have accurate climate records for extreme weather about the last 20 thousand years for most of the world with an accuracy down to about a 20-50 year level depending of area, and moderately inaccurate for about the last couple of million years. It gets pretty inaccurate (ie about 50k years) after that.
Basically we haven’t seen anything like this since the Eocene about 34 million years ago, and we only have an accuracy in the order of 100k years then. This looks freakingly fast climate change.
Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…
As far as I can tell, we are going to beat 2 deg C warming over the pre-industrial baseline, in the next 10 years.
If Global Dimming particulate solar shielding effects disappeared, we would already be there.
And now we are consistently over 400ppm CO2, we have basically gone back 15M years. During the mid Miocene. And the temp then was way hotter than 2 deg C over the pre-industrial baseline.
The thermal inertia of the system means we won’t feel the full heat of today’s 405ppm for half a generation. Fun times.
Want more economic growth, people?
Another day at the office with their own safety/rescue crews.
not infallible though presumably.
a few things that i have raised before
a. we don’t have enough full time emergency staff to cope with the increase of natural emergencies, and all services are having a hard time finding volunteers.
b. we don’t have a population that is prepared to a. look after themselves in case of an emergency or b. be able to volunteer and help the emergency services.
c. check for auckland – i.e. emergency shelters – we will be told where to shelter when the emergency is ongoing – does that make you feel safer? The same can be said for anywhere else in NZ>
As i said in another thread, these are not free services, we are not well prepared here or anywhere else on the planet
I am not saying this to be uppity or aggravating, but as I have stated it before, we – the civilians – are pretty much fucked if we were to have a proper storm/flood/tsunami etc.
As for idiots needing saving …..we don’t need a storm for that, we already have them on any given sunday, see last discussions we had.
I’m pretty much on board with all that. I expect a certain amount from civil defence but generally assume they will be overwhelmed by a big event. If it’s s traumatic event like a quake expect some of them to be traumatised too.
I am curious about the number of people in Sydney that got into trouble and how many were just caught out and how many were trying to save possessions or thought they’d just get through that bit of flood so they didn’t have to spend a night away from home, that kind of thing.
Great. Hollywood has decided it will make a film about the Persian poet, mystic and scholar Rumi to address Muslim stereotypes in film, by casting Euro-Americans in the lead roles (not that that will be the limit of their imperialism).
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/jalaluddin-al-rumi-film-muslim-stereotypes-gladiator-david-franzoni
“Politicians keep saying they are concerned but their actions, or lack of them, drown out their words. Any one of the analyses of how the latest budget failed the reef is enough to confirm this. Perhaps most astonishing in this shameful chapter in reef guardianship, the federal government tried to cover up what was happening by removing reef-related observations from a UN report.”
we could replace the word ‘reef’ with ‘river’……….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/07/as-a-worker-on-the-great-barrier-reef-im-ashamed-to-look-my-children-in-the-eye
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2016/jun/07/great-barrier-reef-diving-in-the-stench-of-millions-of-rotting-animals-video