Detlef Davies, Far North Regional Representative to the Ornithological Society of NZ, has sent their latest newsletter for those non-members & friends who may be interested (or members who have requested an electronic version)

Click on the PDF below to view the newsletter which is stacked with current information on the birds that can be seen in our area. It also includes some stunning photos of some of the rarer species spotted by keen birders in the Far North

Microsoft Word - Apteryx April 2010e.pdf

All are welcome to the OSNZ meetings & events & of course to join the Society. 

www.osnz.org.nz

The NZ Walking Access Commission is recruiting regional field staff.

FIELD ADVISOR – CONTRACT ROLE

Part Time

The New Zealand Walking Access Commission is a small Crown entity established in 2008 to enable enhanced walking access opportunities.

They are seeking up to 6 experienced contractors to act as Field Advisors in regions throughout NZ. All positions are part time (approximately 2-3 days a week) and are contract roles.

The Field Advisors represent the Commission and work at local and regional levels with land holders, tangata whenua, recreation groups, central, regional and local government, conservancies, and the public. The Field Advisors role is to facilitate, negotiate and retain walking access in their region.

The Commission is looking for people who have a passion for the outdoors and demonstrate the following attributes:

• an understanding of, and interest in, the rural environment;
• an understanding of land access and related legal issues;
• credibility with landholders, local and regional councils, tangata whenua, government agencies, and local recreation groups;
• proven negotiation and influencing skills;
• good communication skills; and
• a sense of humour and patience.

The role requires the physical ability to visit and inspect places that are relevant to walking access.

These positions are new and will ideally suit people who have a passion for rural New Zealand and recreation.

For more information go to the Commission’s website www.walkingaccess.govt.nz. Please visit our online recruitment supplier www.QJumpers.co.nz and Browse Jobs to apply.

Applications close on 29 May 2010.

Alter-Natives Wholesale Nursery

Native Plant Fund

9,300 Native Plants for Free.
Given away as 93 lots of 100

Total value of $24,180

Entry form at the bottom of this page

Entries opens 1st March and closes 12th May 2010.

Drawn Thursday 13th May 2010.

Why?

The primary purpose of the Alter-Natives Wholesale Nursery Native Plant Fund is to support/sustain the environment by providing native plants for projects which will increase and improve the habitat for our native wild life such as birds and insects and improve water quality in streams and wetlands for improved habitat for fish etc.  The extended value of this project is widespread for the environment and the community. 

For example:

Revegetation improves the underground water table; reduces rainfall runoff which in turn reduces flooding and silting of waterways including harbours. 

Revegetation creates a forest habitat for our native wildlife which has suffered from the excessive slash and burn of past agriculture practices.

Revegetation will have long term positive effects for our international reputation as a nation that is prepared to spend time and money on the environment.

We do not give away money or labour to support your project, but of the 400,000  plants we produce this year, we have decided it appropriate that we give 9,300 of them away.

History of the Fund:

2009: The area for our third year was extended to include projects which were in the Kaipara Harbour water catchment and the draw dates were brought forward to April.  There was less marketing of the fund and we had fewer entries than the year before.  However of the 85 received, 75 lots went to good projects as far away as South Head.  NRC contributed $3375.

2008:  Our second year saw Northland Regional Council contribute $2000 which added another 1000 plants to make a total of 6000 to give away.  We had 205 entries for 60 lots.  Once again entries and winners were quite diverse.  Unfortunately we had 5 entries arrive some days late. 

2007:  This was the beginning of the fund with 117 entries for 50 lots of 100 plants which was fully funded by Alter-Natives Wholesale Nursery.  Entries ranged from children, retired people, schools, farmers and conservation groups. It inspired us to run this fund each year.  

We want to thank:

Northland Regional Council for their financial support by contributing $6,750 to the Native Plant Fund in 2010.  The NRC contribution means we can give away more plants.

Conditions of Entry:

Almost anybody can enter for a lot of 100 native plants as there are few criteria to be met.

The primary purpose of the planting MUST be for the improvement of the environment.

Applicants can be:

Private land owners.

Schools or other Education providers.

Clubs or Youth groups.

Community trusts or Land Care groups which are responsible for the care of Community, QEII or DOC land.

Applicants MUST:

Site must be in either the Far North, Whangarei, Kaipara, or Rodney Districts.

Apply only once for each project they wish to undertake each year.  That means you can apply each year for the same project if it is ongoing.

Applicants must NOT be:

Property developers or speculators.

Plants MUST be planted:

Fenced off or protected from livestock.

In a way that creates a small forest or joins an existing forest or

Following along a stream or forms a wetland or around a dam.

Plants must NOT be:

For hedges planted in 3 or less rows.

For compliance for council requirements such as resource consent or effluent fields (ETS field).

What plants do you get?

All 93 lots of 100 plants are in 9cm tubes (1/2 litre pots) which are a good size for revegetation.

There are four differing environmental zones of which each will recieve different plants as specified below.

Please return all empty tubes and trays to us for re-use.

How to enter:

Fill in the simple entry form at the end of this document and post it to:

Native Plant Fund

Alter-Natives Wholesale Nursery

571 Ormiston Road

RD2, Waipu, 0582

We must receive entries by Wednesday 12th May 2010.  Note that we are on rural delivery so it usually takes 2 or 3 days to receive mail.

How the winners are drawn:

On Thursday 13th May all correctly filled in entries will by read by representatives from the Department of Conservation and the Northland Regional Council and the 93 winning entries decided.  There is some consideration to the merit of the projects with no hard and fast rules as to who will receive plants.  Winners will be notified by phone over the next few days and their names and areas will be listed on our web site.

When to collect the plants:

Collection of plants can take place from Friday 14th May until Friday 23rd July from Alter-Natives Wholesale Nursery at 571 Ormiston Road, Waipu. 

Please note that we would prefer not to store your plants after 23rd July.

Recommendations for planting:

There is several ways to do revegetation and each way has pros and cons which you’ll need to weigh up for yourself so you can select the method that will suit your needs best.

The basics of revege:

Site Prep:  Preparation of the site could be either; heavy grazing by livestock, mowing/mulching with a tractor, spraying which may or may not be followed with weed-matting, or you may not need to do anything, such as often the case with supplementary plantings.

Mulching:  Placing mulch around the plants will aid in their growth by adding nutrients as it decays and reduces ground heating during summer and increasing moisture retention. 

Plant Spacing:  Plant at about 1m to 2m apart. Plant flaxes at or near the edge not in the middle if planting a forest area.  This amount of plants will create a forest of 100 to 400 square metres (depending on spacing).

Staking:  If you are in a windy area then you should stake the plants or cut the top third to half off each tree.  It is important so that the roots get well established and blowing around will stop that happening.

When to Plant:  Plant as soon as you are able to as this will allow maximum time for the plant roots to develop before summer arrives.  Autumn (May, June) is the main planting season, particularly for big jobs.

Maintenance:  Keep the weeds and grass under control around the plants for the first year so plants get established.

Pukeko problems: You can stop Pukekos from pulling out plants by pushing 1 or 2 stakes diagonally through the root ball of the plant (this requires a 1/2 litre size pot or bigger to be effective). If they are very hungry they will persist to dig them out.

HAPPY PLANTING.    From Ian & Cindy Fox and the Team at Alter-Natives.

www.alter-natives.co.nz

Download the Entry Form in PDF

Download the whole document in PDF

Download the Entry Form in Microsoft Word 93.  You can type on this one and then print it.

Download the whole document in Microsoft Word 93. This one is read-only (and print).

If you have problems opening this file please click here to check you are using the latest Adobe reader

How should we manage sewage better?

What are the options for our future?

Follow-up Sewage "OPTIONS"
Community Meeting:
6:30pm
Thursday 13 May
Taipa Area School Whare

As a follow on from the meeting about the Taipa Sewerage Treatment Plant held in Taipa on 14 April, residents are invited to come to the Taipa School Whare again on Thursday May 13 at 6.30 pm. A presentation from Far North District Council General Manager, David Penny on possible options to improve the management of the Sewerage System will be followed by input from the community and discussion about the practicality and affordability of any of the suggestions put forward.

All Welcome!

Decline in freshwater quality with some rainfall

Water quality monitoring carried out by Doubtless Bay Community Care for Our Catchment on 29th April has recorded a deterioration in water quality in a number of waterways in Doubtless Bay.

Rainfall = Increased overland runoff = Deterioration in water quality

The decline in water quality is most likely linked to pollutants being carried overland into rivers and stream with the rainfall experienced last week. The map below represents the results of the Doubtless Bay freshwater quality samples taken on 29 April. For more information on the monitoring programme and all the results, please click here.

The water quality at each site is assessed and reported according to the Ministry for the Environment and Ministry of Health ‘Microbiological Water Quality Guidelines for Marine and Freshwater Recreational Areas’ revised and issued in 2003. The guidelines recommend a three-tier (traffic-light) management framework according to single sample results of E. coli. Please note this information cannot be used as advice or guidance. Water quality can vary over time, and may be different from when the samples were taken.

Last week to make a submission, please click here for the on-line submission form

As the debate heats up about mining our conservation land it can be hard to sort out what is being taken away and what is being offered in compensation as far as conservation values are concerned. The following article from the Environmental Defense Society outlines the government's proposal and also includes some history of specific areas currently protected by being listed in Schedule 4.

Following the article is a PDF of the Green Party's guide to making a submission on the conservation mining issue. Submissions are due by Tuesday the 4th of May. It would be good to let the government know how you feel about the diminished protection of conservation land.

MiningSchedule4SubmissionGuide

12 April 2010

Dear Colleague,

Mining our special places: a step too far

By Gary Taylor

The government proposes to remove 7058 hectares of protected conservation land from Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act. It is also considering removing several hundred thousand hectares more in nine months time after a minerals survey is completed.

Not all conservation land is in Schedule 4: just the most protected places with the highest natural and landscape values. So the argument is not about the broader role of mining in our economy; it's about whether we should open up the very best of our publicly owned conservation land to private sector miners. The government's discussion paper has generated a great deal of heated debate, inflamed by both the provocative nature of the proposals and the combative and spin-laden nature of the government's own rhetoric. Extravagant claims about the benefits of mining have created a sense of a gold rush, of our leaders losing their judgement. The way the matter has been mishandled has polarised people and is not conducive to a serious discussion about the role of mining in our conservation estate.

Promoting the idea of allowing gold and silver mining on Great Barrier Island came as a complete surprise. No sensible government would open that land to mining and no Environment Court would ever be persuaded to allow it. It is steep, highly visible, important for tourism and located on one of the most remote and undeveloped islands in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park. And mining is prohibited under Auckland City's district plan. A mine on White Cliffs would need an access road, a cyanide extraction plant and a large tailings dam to store the toxic waste product on flat land at Claris. If the tactic was to put the proposition up as a straw man, to make government look reasonable when it "listens" and decides not to allow mining there after all, then it has backfired. It has enraged many Aucklanders including the National member of Parliament and the Mayor and drawn people into the wider debate in their thousands.

The plan to open National Parks to mining is even more challenging. The government proposes to allow coal mining in 3315 hectares of the Paparoa National Park. It's one thing to mine under the Paparoa National Park with an entrance outside the park boundaries - that happens now - and quite another to mine within it. A large scale coal mine is usually open pit with extensive visual scarring from both the mine and the roads and infrastructure.

Our first National Park was established in 1887. They have all been set aside in perpetuity for their intrinsic values and are our most iconic protected places. Their purpose is set out in the National Parks Act:

It is hereby declared that the provisions of this Act shall have effect for the purpose of preserving in perpetuity as national parks, for their intrinsic worth and for the benefit, use, and enjoyment of the public, areas of New Zealand that contain scenery of such distinctive quality, ecological systems, or natural features so beautiful, unique, or scientifically important that their preservation is in the national interest.

Even if a national park was removed from Schedule 4 protection, the granting of access has to be done lawfully. The government has confirmed that it has no intention to amend the National Parks Act so it's hard to see how allowing any form of mining could survive legal challenge. Any applicant would have to be very brave to see a way through the litigation battlefield to get access, let alone pass the formidable barrier of the Resource Management Act and get consents.

Then we move to the Coromandel Peninsula. At present all of the conservation lands north of the Kopu-Hikuai Road, the so-called green line, are protected from mining. That status was achieved after nearly 20 years of campaigning (see side bar). The 3,038 hectares that are now proposed to be opened to mining on the Peninsula are described in the government's report as high priority sites for habitat and species protection and containing a number of threatened species. The areas north of Thames have high rainfall and are flood prone, are coastal, forest covered, steep and have outstanding landscape values. It's hard to see how underground mining with its roads, portal areas, water discharges and heavy traffic movements could be done without significant environmental damage. It's not exactly the Australian desert. It doesn't end there though.

In phase 2 all of the rest of the conservation land on the Peninsula will be surveyed for its prospectivity and possible removal from Schedule 4. Elsewhere in the country, surveys will examine Northland (including the famous Puketi and Waipoua Forests), parts of the central North Island and parts of Central Otago and the West Coast. They will also have a close look at opening a lot more of Paparoa to mining as well as parts of Rakiura National Park (Stewart Island).

Already the government seems to recognise that mining many of these areas will not be economic. Perhaps to save political face, it is considering wheeling in Solid Energy to be the nation's miner of all minerals. This is reminiscent of Sir Robert Muldoon's Think Big initiatives such as the hugely expensive Clyde Dam. It is deeply ironic given the government's preference for the private sector.

So what is a sensible way forward? How can we find legitimate ways to improve New Zealand's economic performance without losing our judgement? For a start, we need a serious focus on how we can grow the economy in a sustainable way. Green growth, smart growth, clean tech - call it what you want - is what's needed. The Prime Minister is apparently warming to the idea of a task force to look at how we can move away from reliance on commodity production and resource-based industries and emulate countries like Finland, South Korea and Taiwan which have built prosperity on modernising and diversifying their economies. We certainly need to take more care with our biggest single sector, tourism, which was worth $21 billion last year.We make more from tourism than dairying and it can continue to expand in a sustainable, long-term way. The 100% Pure New Zealand tourism brand is vitally important to our long-term economic welfare.

Mining our most precious places, including the National Parks that we use to promote that brand, seems absurd. Mining has a role but it has to be in the right place. Schedule 4 protects just 13% of New Zealand's land area. It is the highest value land for nature conservation, the very best bits. Surely mining attention should focus on the other 87%.

No land should be removed from Schedule 4 protection.

Coromandel Peninsula

In the late 1970s, Gold Mines New Zealand Ltd proposed a large open-pit gold mine above Otama, a white sand beach on the Coromandel Peninsula. This so enraged locals that they mobilised and set up Coromandel Watchdog. There followed 20 or more years of hard-fought community agitation, direct action and litigation.

The National government recognised that the old Mining Act wasn't up to the job of assessing the environmental impacts of mining in such sensitive locations and Bill Birch introduced an amendment in 1981. Mining interests faced higher hurdles and many fell including the Otama proposal. Other mines on the Thames Coast failed to get access permission because of concerns about the environmental impacts, including an underground proposal at one of the sites now being proposed for mining again. In 1997, after more than 25 years of campaigning, the public land on the Peninsula was finally protected from mining by virtue of being listed in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act.

The Government's Proposals Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act protects about 40% of our conservation lands or 13% of New Zealand's total land area from mining. The government proposes to take the following areas out of that protected status right away and to investigate hundreds of thousands of hectares elsewhere with more changes to follow in nine months time.

Submissions on these proposals close on Tuesday 4 May (see http://www.med.govt.nz/).

Areas proposed for immediate remaoval of Schedule 4 protection are:

705 hectares of Te Ahumata Plateau (White Cliffs) on Great Barrier Island 

Thames goldfield;3038 hectares - Golden Hills near Tairua; Tapu, and Waiomu on Thames Coast; Hauraki Hill; Tokatea-Kapanga and Matawai near Coromandel township; and the Otahu Ecological Area and Parakawai Geological Area near Whangamata; all on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Inangahua sector of Paparoa National Park 3,313 hectares

Environmental Defence Society

PO Box 95 152,

Swanson, Waitakere City 0653

Phone: 09 835 4350end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Email: manager@eds.org.nz 

For more information about EDS go to www.eds.org.nz; www.edsconference.com

The Community Guide to the Resource Management Act go to www.rmaguide.org.nz

Workshop 7 May: SOIL EROSION = INCOME EROSION!

MAF is sponsoring a series of eight workshops around the North Island about the impact of erosion on the economic and environmental sustainability of hill country.

These workshops are supported by Regional Councils and aim to upskill participants in erosion recognition, processes and treatment options.

SOIL EROSION = INCOME EROSION!

After drought comes rain!

Rain causes soil erosion

Soil loss reduces profit

and contaminates waterways

Come and learn about soil erosion:

• What causes it
• How to repair it
• How to prevent it

Take advantage of more than one hundred years’ combined experience in erosion control with Garth Eyles and Norm Ngapo, together with Bob Cathcart, Northland Regional Council.

When: Friday 7th May 2010 9am to 5pm

Where: Pete’s Pioneer and Transport Museum,460 Kerikeri Road, Kerikeri

Admission: Free (Lunch provided)

There will be an afternoon field exercise so come prepared

(outdoor gear and walking shoes/boots)

Register before May 3rd by:

Phoning: Nola 0800 002 004 or (09) 470 1100

Emailing: nolas@nrc.govt.nz

Programme:

Morning tea available from 8.45am in cafeteria

9.00 Introductionsand project description. What we aim to achieve.

9.20 Introduction to Erosion in NZ; historical and current, classification & standards.

10.00 Erosion processes, controls and repair associated with hill country earthworks.

10.30 Stretch break

10.35 Setting the local scene

10.45 Description of erosion types occurring in this region.

For each erosion type we will focus on:

• What is it?
• How bad is it?
• Why should I fix it?
• How do I fix it?
• How do I prevent it from occurring?
• How did it happen?

12.15 Field trip briefing

12.30 Lunch

1.15 Field Trip OR wet weather programme

5.00 Finish at the Museum

Planning Meeting: Monday April 26

Local Inspiration for Global Action Day

The global Climate Change action group, 350.org, is encouraging people to take action in their own communities, raise awareness of climate issues and pressure their elected representatives to make the hard decisions about protecting our climate.

Last year, on October 24, people around the Far North took part in a global day of action for the climate and in doing so became part of the biggest global action ever mounted! Locally, this took the form of a guided walk through the Ahipara Gumlands, raising awareness of an area of unique biodiversity that faces the twin threats of climate change and encroachment from development.

This year 350.org are proposing a Global Work Party on the 10th of October. Their website has plenty of ideas of the form that could take for local groups, but how about Kaitaia coming up with something totally unique?! A meeting to plan for the October event will be held next Monday:

When: April 26, from 5.30pm.

Where: Far North Environment Centre, CBEC Building, Pukepoto Road, Kaitaia

Everyone is welcome, so bring your ideas, your aunty and a couple of neighbours!

In the meantime, check out what's happening around the world as people take charge of climate change action. In session now is the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth,  being held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 19 to 22, 2010. Follow the proceedings at http://www.350.org/bolivia

For more information on the global climate movement, go to http://www.350.org