River report hailed by conservationists

Two Otago conservation bodies have welcomed a national report which highlights serious concerns about declining water quality in the nation's rivers and urges more co-ordinated action to protect them.

The Otago Conservation Board and the Otago Fish and Game Council, which have both held meetings in Dunedin in the past few days, praised the report which was commissioned by the New Zealand Conservation Authority.

"The defects in our management system have been made very clear and it's time to address them," board chairwoman Associate Prof Abby Smith said.

Prof Smith, of the University of Otago marine science department, said Otago and the rest of the country faced "serious problems" arising from the gradual deterioration in the water quality of some rivers.

However, the problems were also becoming "increasingly recognised" by the public, she said this week.

The Otago board commended the authority's efforts in commissioning a "very thorough" and high-quality report, which was a "fantastic" achievement, she said.

Titled "Protecting New Zealand's Rivers", the recently released 68-page report paints a stark picture of inadequately protected rivers being pushed towards crisis point by economic development.

The volume of large resource consent applications had stretched Doc's statutory advisory capacity, the report, to Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson, warned.

Advocacy for the protection of "ecosystem services and in-stream values of regionally and locally significant rivers" was increasingly being led by Fish and Game, voluntary organisations such as Whitewater New Zealand, Forest and Bird, and interested citizens, the report said.

"The full load of advocacy work on behalf of the public is beyond the capacity of these groups," the report noted.

Otago Fish and Game Council chief executive Niall Watson spoke out strongly on water-quality issues when he appeared as a liaison guest at the Otago board's recent meeting.

"New Zealand rivers are in trouble," he said.

The national rivers report was "a very useful initiative, which deserves to be built upon".

Action was needed to provide a base level of protection for all freshwater ecosystems, to protect representative examples and to maintain diversity, and to protect outstanding waters, he urged.

The Nevis, which had been dubbed "Central Otago's outdoor museum", was the council's "local candidate for river protection".

Fish and Game welcomed the Otago Regional Council's proposed rural water-quality strategy, in response to "a most serious problem" involving generalised pollution problems which did not arise from a single "point source".

He noted that a consultative draft had just been released.

However, Fish and Game did not like claims that Otago's water quality was "generally high".

Focus was needed on areas of intensive land use and evidence of deterioration over the past 10 to 15 years.

Regional councils should take credit only where they were managing water quality successfully in the face of changing land use, he said.

john.gibb@odt.co.nz