NZ news

[Paul Arden]

Very interesting NZ article http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/top/25074 ... h-and-game

Cheers, Paul

[Chris Dore]

Quite a lot more on www.stuff.co.nz and www.nzherald.co.nz

Nick smith is a cock

[John Finn]

Good to see a fishery organisation with balls. Wish we had one here.
Different subject; Just saw a mallard duck with a yellow duckling on my local river . One of five. Very late for ducklings, farmyard blood somewhere. Never noticed this before Bernd mentioned it.

[Paul Arden]

Apparently they grow up to be white ones.

[David Anderson]

I think fish & game NZ are awesome for standing up for the rivers.

Even forgetting about tourism dollars, it's pretty obvious how important fishing & hunting are to kiwi's on a personal level.
IMHO, money can't really compensate for the loss of such great fishing.

[Paul Arden]

It's a very interesting system. As I understand it, the entire F&G is funded by fishing and hunting licences and using this they fight businesses and the government for access, natural river flows, clean rivers, pure nature so on. It's quite remarkable and the only one I know.

[David Anderson]

I would love to see the same thinking here in Australia.

The licensing and enforcement could be much more robust.

[Paul Arden]

Here in the UK it's considered by many to simply be a tax that gets swallowed up. But an active, elected and independent body paid for and elected by licence holders has to be a great thing. It's the one fishing license that I pay that I feel good about. I pay the others too and hope they do some good, but you have to wonder where the money goes sometimes. The UK government has cut back on spending on important things such as flood defences and river bank restoration, so I don't think healthy fish are exactly top priority for them either.

I've got to see it first hand because my family lives on a small river in the UK. The stretch of river here was managed by the local authorities, cleared of week, banks reinforced, the fish were electrofished and measured annually. But none of this has happened in recent years. However the Environment Agency has a budget of 1.2 billion pounds - and have had major cut-backs in recent years. UK angling revenue in licenses is approx 23 million. And while F&G obviously don't repair flood damage and no doubt a host of other things that the EA does (as far as I'm aware), and indeed are a completely different entity, I can only wonder that F&G must be seriously underfunded.

But I really don't know, and it would be interesting to know!

Cheers, Paul

[David Anderson]

It's the one fishing license that I pay that I feel good about. I pay the others too and hope they do some good

I agree.
It's pretty obvious what you're paying for in New Zealand.