Newsletter #52
Tēnā koutou,
Many of us will be looking for ways to keep children and grandchildren entertained and occupied over the next few weeks, so we’ve teamed up with Trustpower to create an online project with the added enticement of prizes. Check out Tara the tarapuka’s project and please share with anyone you know who has children of all ages. In a few days/weeks they will all be looking for something new to explore and ways to stretch their creativity.
The Braided Rivers Symposium is still booked for 08 July. If you have booked, apologies as you are about to receive a second email about this and Tara’s project. In essence, I suspect it may need to be postponed but I’ll keep everyone informed as the situation evolves. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll find some diversionary reading from inside your bubbles via the links below.
Ngā mihi,
Sonny Whitelaw manager@braid.org.nz
Reports, news, and updates
- The Canterbury region biodiversity half-year report is now available (ECan)
- The latest bird surveys on the Opihi River are now online
- Lockdown yoga routines from the world’s rarest wading bird – the kakī / black stilt (Te Manahuna Aoraki video)
- Major research on the Rangitata River to take place this year (at least, it was. I imagine this and other projects will be delayed)
- Impact of the fires on the Ashley-Rakahuri River (ARRG)
- Report on overhead line kills on the Ashley-Rakahuri River (ARRG)
- Flight of the robust grasshopper (Te Manahuna Aoraki video)
- Pet cats have a greater negative impact on wildlife than wild cats, but only within 100m of home (Animal Conservation / ZSL publications: study was partially undertaken in NZ)
- Check out Peter Langland’s photos of around a thousand black-billed gulls roosting at the mouth of the Kowai River, Kaikoura
- Driven by big data, these animated visualisations of migration patterns in the US are stunning to watch (eBird) [When can we have them for NZ birds, please? Some programmers out there are bound to have time on their hands…]
- Five black-billed gull fledglings stoned to death on the Waimakariri River (BRaid)
- The state of global biodiversity is worse than you probably think (Conservation Bytes)
- Where did some of the water from Canterbury’s braided rivers end up during the last glacial? Turns out it’s offshore (Nature Communications)
- NZ Environmental watchdog has never brought a prosecution (Newsroom). Which is why…
- …SNAs need to be enforced and monitored and braidplain habitat needs legal protection. See the before and after image from Charlie Mitchell’s story (Stuff)
- Coromandel waterways filled with thousands of dead birds and eels (Newshub)
- Three billboards protest pollution in Canterbury’s Selwyn River (Stuff) express concerns that the Government will fold under pressure from farmers
- …something to consider in light of Shane Jones hijacking Covid-19 as an excuse to not regulate freshwater (clearly, he hasn’t a clue that viruses play swap-the-genes all the time, especially in algae-rich warming waters. Add effluent and polluted rainwater runoff and the result is a water-borne gene bouillon of potentially Promethean proportions… yes, let’s do that and see what happens)
- In fact, if anyone is looking for a freshwater research project, try this one; virtually nothing is known about lake ecosystems upended after climate-change-induced storms (Scimex)
- On the flip side, there’s a growing call to use this moment in history as an opportunity to re-evaluate our economic priorities to develop transformative industries, including farming practices. This article is not just applicable to the US. “Monsanto and the German chemical giant BASF were aware for years that their plan to introduce a new agricultural seed and chemical system would probably lead to damage…“
- Beech mega-masts and predator plagues – expert Q&A (University of Canterbury)
- Climate change disrupting beech masts (Scimex/University of Canterbury)
- Anybody else react like I did (‘OMG it’s a weka!) when they saw this artist’s impression of a ‘wonderchicken’ that walked the Earth with dinosaurs?
- Finally, if you could do with a bit of hilarious reality bird television, check Cornell Lab’s live bird cams
