News the Gore district is expected to experience negative growth of -0.3 % per year until 2031 came as no surprise to Mayor Tracy Hicks.
On Monday, Statistics New Zealand released its latest national population projections. Mr Hicks said statisticians had "been talking this way for some time" and work would continue to ensure Gore was a place people wanted to live, bring up children and work.
"We will continue to work hard to create a wonderful place to live in and a business-friendly environment."
Gore was the only South Island district to drop in population and over the 2006-31 period the district was expected to lose 900 people from the 2006 base of 12,400.
Mr Hicks said apart from the areas projected to experience high growth, such as Queenstown-Lakes, Selwyn district and Auckland, "everyone is very much within 1% of each other".
He emphasised recent events such as plans for redundancies at the Tiwai Point smelter could upset predictions and it took only one industry or one employer to alter the projections.
"There has been quite a lot of talk around [mining] the lignites down here," he said.
If that went ahead, it would "change population trends quite markedly".
