Rebecca Fox

A study of five Otago lakes, including the two largest freshwater bodies in the region - lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu - will allow the Otago Regional Council to monitor their health.

A close eye will be kept on the Government's review of air quality standards to ensure the outcome is good for Otago, the chairman of the Otago Regional Council, Graeme Martin, says.

An attempt to have the Otago Regional Council more thoroughly investigate alternative sites for its proposed waterfront office block failed by one vote.

Residents living near the proposed site of a McDonald's restaurant and McCafe in Hartstonge Ave, Mosgiel, are opposed to the plan, worried about it attracting an "undesirable element", its late opening hours and it creating noise, traffic, litter and smell.

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.

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.

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.