Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 136
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
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| Government gives two fingers to our environmental legislation |
This conservative
NZ government has been trying for 9 years now to repeal the RMA, (our environmental
law) that ironically, it was itself responsible for passing back in
1991. Its allies had been refusing to help, until finally it succeeded with the support
of the Maori Party.
This is a very
unholy alliance and while we support a much louder voice for Maori in
Governmental processes and decision making, this is not the way to do it. The
change effectively excludes Maori from the provisions of a law that applies to
everyone else. The response to this has been very muted, but imagine the outcry
if a progressive government had run such a shabby political gambit. It is gerrymandered
legislation however, and unlikely to survive passed the term of the current
regime.
The Government
has been relentless in its attack on the environment, starving DoC of
adequate funding, allowing mining in protected areas, turning the EPA (Environmental
Protection Authority) into a toothless lackey, used to fast-track projects that
bypass the law, then, when
frustrated in getting its repeal legislation through parliament, resorting to regulation.
(For our US punsters, this is the local equivalent to the issuing of an
executive order, though over here we don’t have your judicial system to review
such behaviour. In fact, aged High Court Justices are usually used to front fast-tracked
inquiries.)
It did this to
undercut local authority power, administered through district plans, to control
the wholesale felling of trees. The end result has been the appearance of
stumps like these throughout our local neighbourhood.
What can be
done?
Well, we might
have sat on our hands, or bleated away in the press, but our activist response
has been to reverse this destruction by beginning a
programme of replanting native seedlings off our own bat. These are being placed
into areas where they originally flourished and seem relatively safe in the
longer term. We have to be careful here to use plants endemic to this area and have
been fortunate to stumble upon a cheap and ready supply. We are keeping
locations classified but here’s a shot of one of our fifth column transplants,
hard at work, flourishing into maturity.
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| Spot the intruder! |
And here is a rare photo of a rarish black shag, a youngster, perched atop the Wharemauku bridge. This is from 50 yards away but she wouldn't allow us to get any closer.
Finally another
intrigue down at the Raumati Beach dunelake, where we stumbled across this
pukeko and her youngster.
We had to be
very quick with this as the little one shot into cover immediately though again, we were 50 yards away. It was very early morning and a little further on we were
astonished to find another brood, this time of five chicks, around two weeks old
though weren’t quick enough to get a shot of them. It is very late in the
season for these birds to be bringing out youngsters and many may not survive
the coming winter. However it augurs well for next years breeding season…
Track we were
listening to today – Judy Collins it has to be scarifying her way through Nina Simone's - Pirate Jenny
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "what's she got to stare at now?"
