Cliffs are back in the spotlight, when it comes to explaining the origin of cattle recently found dead on Dunedin beaches.
After the first two cattle were found, at St Kilda Beach, near Lawyers Head, and at Tomahawk Beach, a city resident contacted the Otago Daily Times and said he believed they had fallen from nearby cliffs.
A farmer and horse trainer who lives near Tomahawk Beach raised the possibility those two beasts could have been caught up in river flooding and gone out to sea before washing up.
All three cattle have been found over the past three weeks, and the latest was found at St Clair Beach on Saturday.
Dunedin police said they had been investigating where the cattle came from.
Otago Regional Council director of environmental monitoring and operations Scott MacLean said the ORC had been approached yesterday morning by the owner of the cow that was found washed up at St Clair Beach last Saturday.
He farmed ''on a clifftop above St Clair and identified the animal as his based on an ear tag from the carcass''.
An ORC contractor had arranged for its disposal, Mr MacLean said.
Within the past two weeks, the ORC had responded to two further reports, one at St Kilda Beach, with the removed by an ORC contractor, and the other at Tomahawk Beach where no carcass was found.
A Dunedin City Council spokeswoman said a DCC contractor was alerted to the Tomahawk cattle, which could not be removed because of its ''state'', and was ''buried on site'' at the beach on August 16.
Mr MacLean said cattle washed up on beaches from time to time, usually a few each year, and the regional council checked their identifying numbers, if available, to clarify where they came from.
It was still unclear where the first two cattle had come from, he said.
ORC chairman Stephen Woodhead ruled out the river flooding hypothesis, and said that checks with ORC monitoring data showed there had not been a significant ''fresh'', with higher than usual water levels, in the Taieri River since May.
Both cattle and sheep could be ''spooked'' by a range of causes, including wandering dogs, and he fully appreciated that accidents could happen near cliffs. But having cattle found washed up on beaches was not what the ORC wanted to see happening, he said.
