Letter: Lake Wairarapa is no pristine paradise

OPINION: Contrary to the tone of your article (A Watery Treasure, Jan 29), Lake Wairarapa is a national disgrace. A recent Niwa report has placed the Wairarapa waterway in the top 10 worst lakes in New Zealand with regard to water quality.
Greater Wellington regional council chairwoman Fran Wilde says the council is going to get stock out of water, fence waterways, plant natives, get rid of invasive weeds and improve access, but I fear once again it is all talk. And if there are still godwits on the lake's margins, one would never know as access is well nigh impossible.
Greater Wellington regional council could follow the example of Hawke's Bay Regional Council with the work they have done with Pekapeka swamp and finally do something for the Wairarapa environment - at least, meet their statutory responsibilities.
NARENA OLLIVER
Greytown

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/4611844/Letter-Lake-Wairarapa-is-no-pristine-paradise

Comments

A Murder of Rooks

From Southland to Northland, Regional Councils around the country are once again putting out the call for sightings of rooks, Corvis frugilegus, in their efforts to exterminate them. The rook is a minor agricultural pest, on a par with the yellowhammer, so how did this bird become a target for extermination rather than control? How did this bird become an unwanted organism under the Biosecurity Act? The rook is a black, hoarse–voiced bird about the size of a magpie which was brought to New Zealand from Britain between 1862 and 1874 to help control agricultural pests. Unlike many other European birds introduced at the same time, rooks spread very slowly at first. Even as late as 1970, they were largely confined to parts of the Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, southern Wairarapa and Canterbury. In the 1971 rooks were declared an agricultural pest in the Hawke’s Bay, largely because of the damage done to emerging crops. Something like 35,000 thousand were shot, probably ...

Tunnel-web spiders and golden hunting wasps

My wildlife experiences these days are pretty much confined to my backyard and a daily ramble around the village of Greytown, New Zealand. During my daily walks, it is the birds which attract my attention: skylarks, (“Hail to thee, blithe spirit”), goldfinches, (“gaillard he was as a goldfynch in the shawe”), black birds, (“shouting all day at nothing in leafy dells alone”), the song thrush, greenfinch, chaffinch, dunnock, california quail, house sparrow, eastern rosella, Australian magpie, starling, yellowhammer –foreigners all. Most of them were introduced in the nineteenth century as bio-agents to control plagues of insects brought about by the wholesale destruction of the bush and the consequential severe disruption of the eco-system. I welcome them all, knowing that in the not too distant future we may be lucky to see any bird at all. I do see the odd native bird; kotare, the kingfisher, pipiwharauroa, the shining cuckoo and its dupe ...

Ara Moa

Greytown, Te Hupenui, is my turangawaewae, the place where I stand, the place where I was born. Wellington and the Wairarapa are where my family settled in the nineteenth century. My ancestors walked the streets of Wellington, Pahiatua, Masterton and the shores of Lake Wairarapa, as I do now. Scientists report, from the evidence of pollen grains, that before humans arrived here, 85-90% of New Zealand, including the Wairarapa, was covered with forest. Grassland or shrubland occurred, as it does now, on river terraces subject to regular flooding, frost-prone valley floors, steep cliffs, and active sand dunes. Outside these limited areas the forest cover was unbroken. In this forested country, the moa roamed, its only predator the great Haast eagle. Evidence suggests that m oa nested in the dunes around the Wairarapa coast and under high rock ledges. On my sister’s farm, near the Mangatainoka river, ...

Greytown county almanac

Search This Blog