My Account
The care of our native wildlife is too important to be left in the hands of city bureaucrats. That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from Auckland Council’s utter failure to act on the declining number of chicks fledging at Omaha . The definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Council has been told for years that the public education it relies on at Omaha is not working. But it continues to ignore calls for a systematic and humane cat trapping programme, and an extension to the predator-proof fence to low water mark. So the dotterels and other shorebirds that roost on the spit pay the price.
On a small but no less important scale, this issue is emblematic of the threats facing the Hauraki Gulf, which is on the brink of ecological collapse from over-fishing, habitat loss, pollution, sedimentation and the effects of poorly planned urban development. This has led to a 57 per cent decline in key fish stocks, a 67 per cent decline in seabirds and a 97 per cent decline in whales and dolphins in the gulf (World Wildlife Fund for Nature).
The time for endlessly blowing hot air around about how to address these issues is long gone. What our environment and wildlife need are politicians with the backbone to make the tough decisions and stick by them, even in the face of public backlash. There will always be the entitled minority who believe their rights trump everything else – the cat owners who take no steps to contain their pets at night, the dog owners who think the sign that says, ‘dogs prohibited at all times’ does not apply to them. The complaints from this sector deserve to, and must be, ignored.
Omaha spit sits at the entrance to the Whangateau Harbour, which itself is suffering death by a thousand cuts – its muddy seafloor no longer a place where cockles, pipi, mussels and tuatua thrive, no longer a place where snapper and parore skim through its waters in schools or where kingfish herd hundreds of sprats. How much more do we have to lose before we wake up and see how much has already gone?
“When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught and the last river poisoned, only then will we realise that one cannot eat money.” Native American saying
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