A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
With regard to the Weekender, December 2: In 10 years it will be too late.
An excellent article with worthwhile and thoughtful quotes from Dame Anne Salmond, Manu Caddie, Sam Gibson, Rangi Ahipene and Rob Morrison.
It’s great that an organisation such as Pure Advantage is putting money and effort
into fixing ecological problems in Tairāwhiti, but it is vital that central government plays a major role with $$s and other support — so the talk of significant cuts to government budgets concerns me.
The current Raukumara Pae Maunga project is a case in point. This long overdue project, led by Te Whanau-a-Apanui and Ngati Porou, in concert with the Department of Conservation, is broad-ranged but mainly focused on pest control over roughly 125,000ha of the Raukumara Ranges — the object being to restore the indigenous ecosystems and mauri of this part of the Raukumara.
Successive governments have spent very little on pest control and ecological care in Tairāwhiti, hence the ecological collapse of our native forests that we are witnessing now, caused by deer, goats, possums, pigs, rats, stoats, mice and feral cats.
