The End of the Dune Lake 1 - You saw it here first!

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 75

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Forest understory clearance underway May 2015

Over the last week the bulldozers have been clearing their way through the old Wharemauku swamp and are now working down in the dune lake itself. On their way through they felled about half our last stand of remnant native forest understory. We couldn’t get in to have a close look, but it seemed mostly mahoe and then a stand of karaka.

Karaka remnant - now you see it

Karak remnant - now you don't.

None of this has been reported in the local news media, so you saw it here first.

Cleared site

Skepticism however, has been expressed in correspondence to the local papers over claims from the NZTA that they are re-establishing forest eco-systems in their indigenous planting programmes. These were described, (the correspondent obviously intent on looking a gift horse in the mouth), as beautification projects designed to hide the motorway and muffle its noise.

Attention was also drawn to the fate of a recent planting programme in a motorway realignment south of the town. This replanted escarpment has never been managed subsequent to the NZTA leaving the area, and is now being overrun with weeds, gorse and blackberry.

Former NZTA planting at McKays Crossing  

In response the NZTA media team upped the ante, by firing off a media story praising their own beneficence, in lavishing such gifts on the local community while outlining the plants and local jobs involved. No response was made to the questions raised, though here’s the rub... the story was dutifully published, unedited. It  appeared word for self-congratulatory word, in both local papers.

In one of the papers a further story outlining the NZTA’s deal with a local Church made the front page.  The story was again a laudatory one with no questions being asked about money that might have changed hands over this deal, though rumours are circulating that it involved significant cash sums. Much was also made of a park and public pond that the NZTA would construct on the site. Again, no mention was made as to who would own this or how it would be subsequently managed when the NZTA left town. They also explained how they were re-establishing this as a wetland to replace the ones they are destroying. Such a pond however would never supply the kind of fecund wild habitat they are currently destroying down at the dune lake.

So how did our news media ever get this clap happy? Is it incompetence? Are they hanging out for corporate jobs themselves, where the pay is around double what they’ll be taking home? Are they getting too close socially to their opposite numbers in the business community? Are they simply understaffed?

Watch this space.

Track we were listening to while posting this It has to be with thanks to  Ben E. King RIP.

When the night has come

And the land is dark

And the moon is the only light we'll see

No I won't be afraid

Oh, I won't be afraid

Just as long as you stand, stand by me

Jill Studd’s Blog

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