Department of Conservation

Seriously…they are…the weirdo tree hugging loons of Buller…going to hold a funeral for a tree:

Buller conservationists plan to hold a wake for a 500-year-old kahikatea tree that was felled by the Department of Conservation so it could extend a nearby tramping hut.

DoC is adamant the tree had to go to keep trampers staying at the Mokihinui Forks Hut safe.

However, Westport conservationist Peter Lusk is horrified, and says the tree had stood firm for centuries.

“It was here when Abel Tasman sailed past,” Mr Lusk said today.  Read more »

David Carter has had a disconnect with the truth. He has been peddling false figures about the One Plan, saying that it will increase farmers costs between 22-43%.

He is either being poorly advised or he is pulling these numbers out of his arse. The Department of Conservation summarises the numbers as follows:

The Court heard evidence on the economic impacts of the plan which indicated the average increase in farm costs of less than 5% but ranging up to 16.6% in some cases. The evidence used by the council was disputed by the primary sectors, who put forward their own evidence however this evidence was not upheld by the court.

It wasn’t upheld by the court because it was bullshit. Bludging farmers having a sook about economics doesn’t mean they are right, and their numbers were considered a joke by peer reviewers, and the Environment Court.

Farmers should realise that just because they have had a historic right to pollute it doesn’t mean they have an enduring right to pollute. They cant screw up our rivers and get away with it like they did in the old days. Their need to internalise the cost they are imposing on society as a free right to pollute is just a dirty big subsidy and subsidised business are unviable.

Farmers should stop saying “we are farmers, aren’t we great” and start saying “we are businesses and we have obligations like every other business in the country”. If they were polluting rivers with a factory they would be getting shut down until they stopped ruining a public good, and would be fined and made to pay for the clean up.

The Greens and Labour should be holding David Carter to account for his fibs. If his department or Federated Farmers are putting up numbers that are bullshit it is a free hit on Carter and they should be hitting him hard and often. Ministers need to base statements on fact, not stuff someone pulled out their arse to justify polluting our rivers.

On Thursday we saw the news that a spy has decided that leaking to a political party in order to cover his butt is a viable proposition. The fact that labour also thought this was a good idea beggars belief, but then again they are the ones who politicised the civil service in the first place.

Ele at Home Paddock has a photo of a lesser crime, but one that shows that there are elements int he civil service that think they can bring their politics to work:

If it was put up or condoned by a DoC staff member then I’m reminded of what former State Services’ Commission Mark Prebble said in an interview with Kathryn Ryan:

“Public servants have to implement the policies of the government of the day

Many people come to government to try to support a good cause. They don’t realise the one who has to determine which good cause is to be supported is the democratically minister of the day. And quite a lot of departments, not slinging off at their professionalism but say DOC, you get a lot of people who join DOC because they know they want to save a kakapo and if not a kakapo it will be the lesser spotted whatever. And if the lesser spotted whatever is not on the minister’s list of priorities they’ll find it hard to do.

A key part of the role of senior public servants is to explain to them well it is the minister who has to take the heat in public about that and the public servant really isn’t just employed to follow their own interests and if they want to follow their interests they can go and work in the private sector like anyone else. . .

. . . No public servant should be zealous about the particular cause they’re interested in. They should be zealous about democracy and respecting the law. . .”

ᔥ NZ Herald

I’m not sure what sort of stupidity blessed the boy who thought chucking rocks at a kea was a good idea…but it looks like he got away with it:

A 12-year-old boy who caused outrage when he killed a kea on a school ski trip has handed over the dead parrot and apologised to conservation authorities.

But the Christchurch boy will not face any further action after he and his school pledged to help conservation efforts to protect the endangered mountain parrot.

The Chisnallwood Intermediate School pupil horrified classmates and teachers when he picked up a rock and hurled it at the kea, killing it instantly on a trip to Canterbury skifield Porter Heights last Friday.

It is believed there are fewer than 5000 kea left in the Southern Alps – the only place in the world where they are found.

School principal Richard Paton – who has described his pupil’s actions as “mindless” – met the boy, his parents and Department of Conservation (DOC) staff today.

Hmmm the one he chucked the rock at is really endanegered…its dead parrot.

I am pretty supportive of the efforts of Ingrid Visser but I read this morning’s Herald piece about Orca around the MV Rena shipwreck and thought that it wasn’t right. After looking more into the claims made I am left disappointed.

She said fewer than 200 orca lived around the New Zealand coastline, and they had the highest endangered threat rating available for animals.

There was nothing to stop the mammals going through the restricted area, and the oil should have been cleaned up sooner, she said.

That statement simply isn’t true. From Ingrid Visser’s own Ph.d Thesis she says:

The conservation status of orca worldwide is poorly known, although two populations of the Pacific North West Coast of North America have recently been classified as ‘Threatened’ and ‘Vulnerable’.

So only two populations in the World are classified, and even then they are only listed as “Threatened, Vulnerable“ which isn’t as she says the highest endangered rating available for animals. The highest rating is Critically Endangered which is several notches above where two populations int he world are listed and way above the overall listing for Orca. In fact Orca aren’t even listed in the IUCN Red List of Vulnerable species, which is the definitive list of for those species with the highest rating for animals.

Now don’t get me wrong, I really admire the work of Ingrid Visser but why would she allow her credibility to be maligned in this manner. There is no possible way for her statement to hold true, both from the evidence of her own Ph.d Thesis and also from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

So what is the world population of Orca?

Worldwide population estimates are uncertain, but recent consensus suggest an absolute minimum of 50,000. Local estimates include roughly 25,000 in the Antarctic, 8,500 in the tropical Pacific, 2,250–2,700 off the cooler northeast Pacific and 500–1,500 off Norway.

Sure there are some local populations that are endangered but that is not what Ingrid Visser said. You would think if they were as endangered as Ingrid Visser has said then the Department of Conservation would say so, only they don’t.

The killer whale (Orcinus orca) is the most widely distributed mammal on earth with the exception of humans. Its distribution is patchy however and it is more commonly seen at the poles and in cooler waters. It also prefers deeper water but can be found in shallow bays and estuaries, and in inland seas.

The facts, including Visser’s own work, don;t support the statement. That really means that the whole article is just shameful sensationalism of the oil spill for their own ends.

Sure it is awful that there is oil in the sea, and awful that Orca are swimming through the area that previously had oil in it, but it is actually sensationalism to link the oil spill to their endangered status, which as I have shown is far from endangered.

Yesterday on Radio Live, Matthew Hooton raised some interesting points about the Pike River mining disaster and lays the blame for the disaster squarely at the feet of Helen Clark and her cabinet. (Thursday 25/11 listen after 3:15pm)

To my knowledge the design of this mine was entirely predicated by the interference of green politics. The Helen Clark led Labour cabinet approved the Pike River mine but with some design contraints that probably have led directly to the deaths of 29 miners.

Due to the location, the conditions of the access arrangement required special consideration for the environment, such as a need to minimise tree felling and a requirement to reinstate all above-ground areas after mining ceases. Opponents of the mine strongly criticised the approval of the access agreement, noting that the coal is not intended for domestic use but simply a commercial operation, and thus should not have been allowed to go forward in a sensitive location. Forest & Bird also criticised the fact that the Minister of Conservation chose to ignore the report from the Department of Conservation stating that the mine would be damaging to the local environment. Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand also criticised the project for furthering the use of fossil fuels instead of developing sustainable alternatives.

Those protestations by the green movement and together with the constraints placed upon the operation by the Department of Conservation and its minister (Chris Carter) at the time, meant that Pike River mine was built in a highly unique way, with a method that well may be proven to have led to the build up of gases to such a critical level.

By insisting that the mine entrance be placed outside Paparoa National Park and also, information suggests, veto-ing the boring of a second ventilation shaft because of a blue duck living in the area meant that undue risks were placed on the miners. They had to tunnel from below the actual seam of coal and through more than 2kms under the National Park in order to gain access to the resource. Normally mines are built atop the mineral to be extracted, if normal mining operations are being undertaking, thus boring down onto the resource, but also allowing lighter than air gases such as methane to escape. By having to mine from below the resource and by failing to allow a second ventilation shaft because of a stupid duck, they may have killed those miners.

This is the only mine in the world that has its entrance BELOW the resource and mines up and towards the resources. Methane, a lighter than air gas had nowhere to go. The mine operation is described in Wikipedia, clearly showing the contraints placed upon operation.

The coal is mined 200m underground, at 800m above sea level, quarrying coal from the Brunner coal seam. The coal is taken from the mine via a ‘drift’, a gently-sloping 5 degree tunnel 2.3 km long. This tunnel has taken large amounts of dynamite to create, as the rock is described as being up to four times harder than concrete. Since the coal face will be located higher than the tunnel entrance, removal of material to a processing plant 10.6 km away will be via a slurry pipeline (with a 35% solids share).

Another major feature of the underground works is a 110m-deep ventilation shaft. After local ground conditions were found to be worse than expected, it was excavated with a raise-bore system excavating the 4.25m ventilation shaft from a 0.35m pilot drill shaft. Access to the top of the ventilation shaft is by helicopter only, even during construction, as conservation restrictions do not allow roads to be built to reach this point.

Make no mistake, conservation restrictions placed upon the company by green politics and the enviro-fascism of Helen Clark have led directly to the deaths of these 29 miners.

If normal mining methods had been allowed or even open cast mining then 29 miners may well be alive today. Helen Clark, Chris Carter, Greenpeace, Forest and Bird and the Department of Conservation may well have blood on their hads by making politically expedient decisions that protected trees and ducks over hard-working miners.

When I was a kid going on holiday I would leave late at night so I could see how many possums I could run over on the drive over the hills at Coromandel. I have always enjoyed bombing up possums and rabbits as they are pests. My best ever night possum shooting was 225 possums at Matamata.

It is a pity that do-gooder anti-gun weirdos and greenies don’t see videos and stories like this before they protest about 1080 and hunting.

The Department of Conservation has released video footage of a possum killing and eating a young kea.

Researchers using nest-cameras have for the first time recorded attacks on defenceless kea nests invaded by stoats and possums in South Westland. Possums were known to kill adult kaka but for the first time have been filmed attacking the threatened species of native parrot, which only lives in forest and alpine areas of the South Island.

A large numbers of kea nests were failing in the wild, said DOC’s Brent Barrett.

“We are just midway through the breeding season and of eleven nests we’ve had under surveillance three have been devastated by stoats and possums. That’s a loss of six chicks.

“It was a grisly surprise to see photos of a possum eating a nearly fledged kea and video showing the prolonged and tormented death of chicks attacked by stoats,” Mr Barrett said.

Nearly all the monitored nests were visited by possums, which meant there was a huge risk to the lowland populations of kea.

Mr Barrett said was distressing to discover that just how long it takes chicks to die during a prolonged attack by stoats.

I’ll be continuing to swerve to hit any possums I see on the road

Nicola Vallance was the “face of DoC”. Her role at DoC was the national media adviser. What follows is an incredible 20 days that ended up with Forest and Bird uncovering complex details of National’s plans to investigate mining in DoC controlled lands. You join the dots and see if you end up where I do. Thankfully being a media and social media savvy whiz-kid Nicola left the trail for me to follow.

Feb22 1850: Nicola Vallance resigns from her beloved DoC job as national media advisor. (Original Tweet deleted)

Nicola Vallance resigns 22 February 2010

Feb23 1550: Re-tweets resignation

Nicola Vallance tweets resignation again

Feb24 1932: Tells John Campbell she has resigned from DoC

Mar5 0940: Signs contract with Forest and Bird

Mar9 09:19: Slags off Government and links to Greenpeace press release while on the public service payroll

Nicola Vallance slags off Government while on DoC Payroll

Mar12: Nicola Vallance finishes up at DoC.

Nicola Vallance last day at DoC

Mar13: Just a day after leaving DoC ODT is running a story about her.

Mar15: Forest and Bird “uncovers” Government mining plans. Their website actually released the details on Mar 14, just two days after Nicola Vallance left DoC.

Of course they know, the former national media advisor of DoC now works for them.

Mar16 2022: Having a skite about ODT article about her leaving DoC. Boy they covered that real quick, she only left on the Friday and an article is all ready to go on Tuesday.

She had the weekend off and voila on her first day at Forest and Bird they miraculously “uncover” the governments mining plans. Well I wonder how they did that?

This is perhaps a case of joining dots, or circumstances matching rather too nicely but one can’t help but draw the conclusion that either the dots all line up or it is a total coincidence that the chain of events exactly match her leaving DoC. I am sure  she was a civil servant of the highest integrity though.

Fortunately too we know exactly how to handle the situation of a former civil servant working for any organisation in receipt of public monies. Pete Hodgson provided just such a template in March, 2000 when dealing with Kit Richards.

Forest and Bird is nothing short of a political lobby group and as such should not receive even one cent of government funding. (In 2009 they received more than $750,000 in Government Grants, according to their annual return registered at the Charities Commission)

Sheesh, Helen must be soft, there is nary an explosion and it is 10:35. If this is what Kandahar sounds like at night I might just move there for some peace and quiet.

You know if she had just got her own fireworks out and rugged up the kids and joined her constituents then she wouldn't have looked so out of touch…..oh wait, no fireworks, no kids…..ooops looks like she is out of touch with her constituency.