Heal estuary

You know politicians have their back to the wall when they start mixing fact and fantasy and launch personal attacks on others.

Guru refers in his latest column (Sept 19) to a meeting of the recently-formed Waikanae Estuary Whitebaiters Network and his discovery of a Ma¯ori belief that what you take you must give back.

Connecting this to whitebaiting on the Waikanae River he asked in his column what whitebaiters have given back to the spirit of the river in return for a feed.

Unfortunately he has undertaken no research to support his accusation that we only ‘take’ — and when he had the chance at our meeting he didn’t bother to ask whitebaiters how we give back.

Instead he hid behind his column.

Had he spent more time talking with us he would have discovered a breed of individualistic people — Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ — whose respect for the life of the river has at some stage or other quietly spilled over into personal support activities.

Ma¯ori elder Rakauoteora Te Maipi and I, as members of the steering group, are happy to tell anybody of the scale of contributions we have personally made to the river but it’s not our place to speak for all.

The undisputed fact is that since the Waikanae Estuary Scientific Reserve was officially established in 1992, DoC and the KCDC and GWRC have between them allowed the estuary to slowly die.

It can barely be classified now as a scientific reserve — mud has smothered large areas, bird and fish habitat is badly depleted, and whitebait breeding grounds lost.

For 26 years none of the authorities have publicly disclosed the scale of degradation, nor come up with any ideas for stopping it. They appear to have abrogated responsibility.

So Guru, instead of trying to deflect attention and