A hearing panel of six councillors considering the inclusion of a new $31 million office block in the Otago Regional Council's long-term plan has handed the decision over to all councillors.
A conservation group is warning irrigation plans for the Mackenzie Basin could change its unique landscape and cause an "environmental disaster".
The announcement of 100 new paramedics for frontline emergency services and more training for rural volunteers nationwide was a "long time coming", a St John spokesman said yesterday.
The 2009 Bluff oyster season, described as "magnificent" by one processor, is nearly over.
Weather statistics have confirmed what we all suspected about May - it was colder and wetter than normal, with some areas receiving two or three times the average rainfall.
Two recent search and rescue operations in the Silver Peaks area, near Dunedin, have highlighted the importance of warnings in a new brochure for trampers that it is "rugged, challenging country; very exposed, with weather conditions that can change rapidly".
With majority support for a pest eradication programme on Otago Peninsula to protect its biodiversity values, it was now time to go the next step - finding out how many and where the possums were.
Questioning Opoho School pupils about the vegetables in their school garden, Green MP Sue Kedgley was happy to see they knew their silverbeet.
A $54 million cut in its budget for the next four years has left the Department of Conservation looking to reduce spending in lower-priority areas and avoid redundancies.
Andersons Bay inlet's diverse population of birds will soon have a new place to roost, safe from humans and pets.
The chances of the solar-powered transmitters on two young Taiaroa Head albatrosses starting to transmit again are getting slimmer by the day, researcher Bindi Thomas says.
They are bright, active and happy toddlers with little outward signs of their traumatic start to life.
Discovering a penguin they had released, after spending a year nursing it back to health, had been killed by a dog, has angered staff at Penguin Place on Otago Peninsula.
Balaclava's May rainfall record has been broken, thanks to another nearly 14mm on Thursday night.
A community coastal care group is being formed to discuss remedial work at Te Rauone beach, Harington Point, near Dunedin.
Dunedin's recent steady rain will see at least one suburb of the city break a 34-year-old rainfall record for May - with 10 days of the month remaining.
The dumping of domestic cats in remote places on Otago Peninsula is threatening the area's "very precious" wildlife.
Pictures of pigs in single sow stalls featured in a television current affairs programme have shocked animal lovers around the country, but a Dunedin farmer stands by indoor pig farming.
"Idiotic'' Dunedin drivers who attempted to go through the road closed barriers on Three Mile Hill Rd this morning put themselves and police at risk, Senior Sergeant Mel Aitken said.
There has been a fatal accident at Dacre, in Southland, which has resulted in the closure of SH 1 near Spurhead Creek, from Edendale to Invercargill.