The law catches up with a paua plunderer who put profits ahead of his kaitiakitanga

The Ministry for the Environment’s website is instructive, in helping us understand Maori attitudes to the environment.

We should be encouraged to learn and understand these attitudes and values, because the Maori (see here) are treated by our government – and the United Nations, too, come to think of it – as special people.

Māori hold a distinct and special status as the indigenous people, or tangata whenua, of New Zealand. Indigenous rights and indigenous culture are of profound importance to New Zealand and fundamental to our identity as a nation.

This means they should be accorded special treatment.

They like to take full advantage of this entitlement.

Maybe the way to stop the poaching of kereru is to permit sales of fried pigeon and chips

Put it on the KFC menu and it might be saved.

Oh dear. It looks like native wood pigeons are as doomed as the moa, at least in some parts of the country.

And for much the same reason. They make good tucker (or at least, that’s what Alf is told, although he has never eaten pigeon pie, or pigeon kai, or any other pigeon-based dishes).

In the Far North, some people obviously are tucking in, even though the bird is supposed to be legally protected.

The consequences are reported in the Sunday Star-Times here.

Maori poachers hunting wood pigeons to the verge of extinction in the north are refusing to listen to pleas to stop from their community.

And –

The birds are in decline in Northland, where hapu mumbers say they have found evidence of illegal hunting.

Nah, you don’t have to plead with Nick Smith to ignore a public clamour

They must be a sheltered breed, your South Canterbury farmers.

Alf makes this supposition on the strength of a Radio NZ report today that such a farmer is warning Environment Minister Nick Smith not to be swayed by public opinion on applications for large-scale dairy farms in the Upper Waitaki region.

Why should he be worried that a politician might be influenced by public opinion?

Sure, we pollies pore through the newspapers and keep tabs on what people are saying on TV and the radio. And we spend heaps of money on polls to keep tabs on the public mood, and when we have measured it, we blissfully ignore it.

Icecream has melted from today’s news from Cathedral Cove – so has the grumblers’ credibility

Alf is pleased to bring you this follow-up to his post yesterday about the march of progress into Cathedral Cove.

Despite angering some locals, young entrepreneur Shanan Laird says he has had good feedback from tourists visiting his gazebo at Cathedral Cove.

He’s come under fire from angry locals for buggering up the scenery, but he tells us tourists are relieved to see him at the end of a long, hot walk, and that he is leaving the white-sand beach cleaner than he finds it each day.

Shanan Laird, 31, said he had had nothing but positive feedback from visitors – and only two negative comments from locals – since he began selling drinks and sandwiches at the untouched spot, 30 minutes’ walk from the road.

Greenies grudgingly salute farm managers

So the grouchy Greens do recognise good farm practices, when they see ’em. Pity is, the recipient of a rare plaudit is the state-owned Landcorp, rather than a privately owned farm.

Never mind. Russel Norman, at Frogblog, says

Here’s some good news on dairy farming and a doff of the cap to the SOE Landcorp and its farm managers.

Chauvel’s caution had already been sounded

From the Labour side of the political divide comes a media statement headed “Latest NZ carbon position no cause for complacency”.

The statement was issued by Labour’s Climate Change Issues Spokesperson Charles Chauvel, who said there were four reasons why the Government’s announcement of a better-than-expected carbon emissions position should be treated with caution.

Alf was pleasantly surprised by Chauvel’s numerical skills. Obviously he misunderstood when – in a chat with mates in Bellamy’s about Labour leadership prospects – someone said Chauvel didn’t count.

Nothing here to make up for those bloody fuel taxes

Alf has been eagerly awaiting news from the Beehive to help mollify his Eketahuna North constituents, who remain riled about being stung with higher fuel taxes to make life easier for Aucklanders on the transport front.

No salve was dispensed today.

That’s not to say the Beehive has buggered off to the West Coast for a get-together, as Labour MPs did – to a region that should have been as scarlet red as The People’s Flag, but which fell to the Nats at the last election.

National’s Ministers are beavering away and earning their keep.

Thou shalt not play with e-gadgets

The St Heliers Presbyterian Church in Auckland somewhat curiously is not advising parents to take their kids to church on Children’s Day. Nope. It is urging them to spend the day listening to and talking with children “instead of a Sunday spent being distracted by e-gadgets.”

Jill Kayser, national coach of Kids Friendly, a Presbyterian Church initiative and a member of St Heliers, says that parents and caregivers are being encouraged to interact with their children this Sunday rather than allowing them to zone out in front of TV, DVD players, computers, iPods, Xbox and Playstations.

Adults need to give up their e-gadgets too. Turn off the mobile phones and laptops. Switch off the devices that are taking your time and attention away from an uninterrupted day with your children.

There are lots of recreational things to do together in or out of the home that dont require e-gadgets says Jill,

There’s a greenie angle to all this, too.

And switching off devices will help more than family relationships says Jill; it will also teach children how something as simple as pushing an off button can help the environment by reducing CO2 emissions.

Alf is mind-boggled.

Do we really need to set aside one day a year for interacting with our children and turning off our gadgets to save the planet?

Or should we make an effort to do this every day of the bloody year, thereby making Children’s Day a needless nonsense?

Food for thought (and for debunking food milers)

There’s a great piece at Reasonline, an article from Reason magazine headed “The Food Miles Mistake” and sub-headed “Saving the planet by eating New Zealand apples”.

It challenges the notion promoted by numb-nuts in the muesli mob and like-minded activists that eating local foods should be a moral obligation because locally produced foods (they insist) are better for the planet than foods shipped thousands of miles across oceans and continents.

According to these activists, as the article explains, shipping foods over long distances results in the unnecessary emission of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. This concern has given rise to the concept of “food miles,” that is, the distance food travels from farm to plate.

RMA reform bill introduced

Simply as a matter of record, Alf advises constituents that Parliament this afternoon is debating the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Bill.

The Bill provides for:

• more efficient decision making on infrastructure

• a reduction in the costs and delays of consenting

• the streamlining of planning processes and;

• the restriction of anti-competitive appeals motivated by trade competition and other vexatious and frivolous objections

• improved efficiency and effectiveness of national instruments and central government guidance

• the establishment of an Environmental Protection Authority

• an improvement in enforcement and increase compliance