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About thirty years ago, some Greenie bird watchers from Auckland forced tens of thousands of dollars to be spent relocating a nest of birds from in the path of the soon to be built Esmonde Rd on-ramp. They would surely die if they had to live a few metres closer to the motorway than they already did was the cry. Multiple reports were called for, much hand wringing was done, and in the end, the only way the very important roading project could be completed was to move the few feathered friends to somewhere else.
Accordingly, said birds were captured, and relocated a little way away and all the Greenies rejoiced. Well at least they did for about a day, as the pesky little critters simply flicked the bird to their captors and winged their way back to their previous locale, made new nests and got on about living their lives, completely unbothered by the construction going on next door.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and the idiocy continues. This time it is the Northland Regional Council who is all a twitter over the incredibly rare and thoroughly endangered Fairy Tern. Now the Fairy Tern is a cute wee thing, they tend to live out on the sand dunes near Mangawhai, and their numbers are precariously low, as in there are only about 40 odd of them left in the entire world.
Worryingly, they are also kind of stupid. The silly things don’t make what you and I would think of as a habitable nest, they simply scratch a hollow in a bit of shelly dune and they plop an egg or two into it. Naturally nature takes over sometimes and dogs, ferrets, gulls, quadbikes, tides, winds and the sun all conspire to ruin the little bird’s likelihood of living to a ripe old age.
So yep, let’s do what we can to look after the little birds. We already have banned the dogs and quadbikes but there’s not much we can do about the other stuff other than flog the eggs and raise them somewhere else in a kind of Oranga Tamariki uplift programme for shitty bird parents.
The good thing about the Mangawhai area is it isn’t particularly highly populated, at least outside of the summer rush. And the terns actually head over to the Kaipara Harbour for winter, because (well I don’t actually know why, maybe the fish are tastier over there at that time), but anyway the point is that they are only near Mangawhai for half of the year.
This doesn’t seem to matter to the boffins at the Northland Regional Council though. They have put the kybosh on what was a wonderful plan to reinstate what used to be the lifeblood of the Mangawhai community, the old wharf.
The wharf was what allowed Mangawhai to become the important trading post that it was. Situated almost right up at the end of the estuary, it provided a safe haven for the ships to dock and carry out all the things that made such infrastructure important.
A lot of committed locals have been putting together the appropriate plans, and most importantly the funding, to re-create that awesome old wharf.
So outwardly an extremely good project. Of course there would be some construction issues but in general the locals were very much in favour of the project. Except for the Greenies.
The NRC have killed off the project because the Greenies have determined, by interviewing themselves probably, that the wharf “might” interfere with feeding habits of the little Fairy Terns!
They don’t actually know if the damn birds even feed there as there has never been a study done. And the idiot council accepted this and killed the whole thing off.
Take a look at the picture above and see if you can figure out just how many acres of estuary each of the 40 or so birds might enjoy for themselves. I’m picking the introduction of 100 metres of old school wooden wharf wouldn’t have even the slightest impact on them.
So it was all for nought. Following this insane decision by the jobsworths at the NRC, the entire project has been flushed down the toilet (probably into the same under-designed, cost-exploded wastewater system that the other useless council up there foisted upon the weary ratepayers of the area).
The sheer size of the costs involved in taking the matter to the Environment Court, and the low likelihood of a win, due to the fact they would now have to ‘prove’ that there was zero negative effect on the tiny birds from their plan, have caused the Trust to throw in the towel. Their latest update explaining the reasoning behind this can be found here.
So shame on the Green wombles who put the possibility that a Fairy Tern might have 300 m2 less to feed in (if they actually feed there at all) above the local community’s desire to rebuild the town’s iconic wharf.
A wharf that would’ve been enjoyed by countless thousands of Kiwis and tourists alike. A wharf that stood for 70 years from the 1880’s until as recently as the 1950’s. A wharf that could’ve been built using no taxpayer funds, a wharf that would’ve once again become the hub of the small community.
All because some Karens decided their will was more important than everyone elses. Shame on the Northland Regional Council for allowing this travesty to happen.
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