Thread: The truth is out...

Originally Posted by planenutz

Hi Bing - Don't get me wrong, I'm all for pest control that has a direct affect on the proliferation of native birds. What I was alluding to is the typical methods that large corporate companies and government departments now use to disguise their full intentions. Instead of coming out and telling us exactly what it is they are up to, what they are trying to achieve and how they are going to get results, they instead drip-feed the details in separate disclosures. In order to get the big picture you need to join dots that on the surface, do not appear to connect.

In this case I was joining dots between this bird sanctuary and the culling of tahr.

Incidentally, I'm fairly certain the recent rain in the Rakaia catchment would have done more "damage" to the environment, the plants and the rock formations in one weekend than the population of tahr could ever hope to achieve in decade.

Hi Planenutz,

Understood re the potentially devious nature of some 'bodies'.

Rain is what it is and ain't going to stop doing it's braided river making thing no matter what. I was shooting up the Rangitata yesterday and took a bit of a pause going over Bush Stream to watch the dirty water and listen to the rolling boulders etc which never fails to impress and was thinking about how 'young' our hills are. The constant feed of freshly broken rock fragments streaming down every water course and into the river - no wonder I can't get boots to last more than a year with that sharp rock. Anyway - I've been watching the plant life on the hill for the best part of fifty years now and Tahr have had quite a modifying effect on some species and if the numbers are up can do a lot of damage in a short period of time. Another observation while doing plan transects last year (two observations really) near Forest Creek was that the difference in population between snow tussock and red tussock in 'shoot blocks' and blocks that were being grazed by cattle and sheep was night and day. The blocks that were there for behind the wire shooting with low numbers of animals (Tahr and deer) look so much better than the grazed blocks. The other observation was that the pressure on preferred high faces in winter where game animals spend most of the time is pronounced so the pressure on the all important density and variety of foliage is not that evenly applied. On the whole it mostly appears to be about density and at the moment re Tahr we are on the wrong side of it. I say 'appears' as observation even considered and over a number of decades can be misleading and is far from foolproof. The only thing that cuts through emotive and vested interest speculation and which on the whole can't be bought or coerced is a good quantity of peer reviewed papers. Ooops, got a bit carried away there, I'l pull out before your ears start to bleed