Newsletter #95

News/articles

• Pest Free Waimakariri Summer Photo Competition: see their website for more details.
• International Institute for Sustainable Development: Water Economics Review Calls for Valuing Hydrological Cycle as Common Good.
• NIWA: Future Coasts Canterbury Update 3: (PDF) (see the video here) is looking at how modelling of the Ashley Rakahuri River could be used to assess the impact of higher tidal inundation under future sea-level rise scenarios. The model will be trialled with a view to extending the model at a national scale.
• Northern Outlook: Salty river: more answers need. A timely project, as Kaiapoi’s rivers are just to the south of the Ashley Rakahuri: front page news (again).
• Northern Outlook:Uncovering mysteries of braided rivers: (scroll to page 12) the results of a  $5 million project have been revealed.
  
• NZ Herald: Hopes are rising in the South Westland farming community that the Department of Conservation (DoC) will renew grazing licences in the vast river runs where cattle have grazed for more than a century.
• Newsroom: A River has its day in court. “After years of sideline squabbling, a court will decide how water conservation orders [on the Rakaia] are monitored and enforce.“
• Freshwater Challenge: Ta country-led initiative to restore 300,000 km of degraded rivers and 350 million hectares of degraded wetlands by 2030 as well as conserve intact freshwater ecosystems. Some 49 countries and the European Union are now members (at the time of writing; Aotearoa is not). Resources include guides on including wetlands in Nationally Determined Contributions for climate change. As wetlands are the kidneys of braided rivers, this could be a win-win.
• Biographic: City of Glass “Migratory birds are simultaneously losing weight as the climate changes perhaps because it’s advantageous to have a lighter body in a warmer world—and growing longer wings to compensate for their less robust physiques.”
• AP: World’s oldest-known wild bird lays an egg in Hawaii at age 74 “The long-winged seabird named Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge at the northwestern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago and laid what experts estimate may be her 60th egg.”