DOC

Otago Daily Times reporter Marjorie Cook travels South Westland with a team cleaning plastic debris from remote beaches.

It seems inconceivable South Westland's rugged, remote, boulder-piled beaches should be polluted by plastic. But at the foot of most driftwood mountains, there's a drink bottle, a sea-battered fishing float, or a tangle of ropes and nets. Marjorie Cook reports.

The shooting of a young New Zealand sea lion - a species as threatened as the African elephant or the kakapo - has shocked and dismayed those who work to ensure its survival.

The Department of Conservation has lifted the high alert for the Young Valley after rainstorm forecast for the Mt Aspiring National Park on Tuesday night was less intense than expected.

Owners of baches built on public land will have to open up their homes for other holidaymakers and allow their gardens to be used as campgrounds under new Department of Conservation rules.

Intense rain predictions for today and tomorrow have caused the Department of Conservation to issue a "high alert" warning for the Young Valley landslip dam in the Mt Aspiring National Park.

Rural firefighting techniques are being shared by visiting American firefighters and their counterparts in the Department of Conservation (Doc) this week.

Gem the sea lion and her pup, who made their home on Tomahawk Beach, have been moved to a safer location.

Last fire season was a quiet one for the Department of Conservation, despite a burn in Queenstown which cost $64,000 to extinguish.

The community has been given an extra 15 working days to give their views on the proposed Dart Passage and Riverstone monorail concessions to transport tourists between Queenstown and Fiordland because of the huge public interest and the need for more time to understand the complex issues, the Department of Conservation says.