How can dangerous escooters be stopped?

ON Saturday, I attended and enjoyed one of the many the University of Otago graduations. Many people, from several parts of the world, also enjoyed the ceremony and excitement of the occasion. Following the capping, people flocked to the university to get a photo of the new grads with a backdrop of the clock tower. The weather was excellent and families were enjoying a happy but peaceful atmosphere.

However, a few young people then rode skateboards through the groups. Skateboards can be a nuisance but I wonder what will happen when the escooters are commonplace in our beautiful city.

Some of us have witnessed how people (some quite young children) are riding and dumping these scooters throughout Christchurch. We have also heard about the accidents and the considerable numbers of ACC claims made in both Auckland and Christchurch.

Who gives permission for these dangerous scooters to be brought into a city and can they be stopped?

Dunedin is an education city with huge numbers of students. We want to keep people, of all ages, safe and I can only foresee some of us being severely hurt if scooters become commonplace in Dunedin. Wake up, councillors, before it’s too late. Stop these escooters coming to Dunedin.

Bernice Armstrong

Dunedin

Forest mast years

RECENT cries from the Department of Conservation on the need to be frightened of an impending good beech and mixed podocarp ‘‘mast’’ year are scaremongering from a department utterly confused and incompetent.

Mast years happened for millions of years. In nature’s cyclic way, individual masting years vary.

Supposedly, Doc sees a ‘‘good mast year’’ as a proliferation of pests. Reality is a ‘‘mast’’ year benefits all native biota — birds, insects and vegetation. We will have a proliferation of them. Doc seems ignorant that nature works in cycles and intertwined food chains with predatorprey relationships in equilibrium.

Doc’s policies are in contradiction. It confuses its role as a tourist operator with concession policing organisation by ignorantly slaughtering wild animals (tahr, deer) which many tourists come to see or hunt.

Doc issues permits to hunt game animals yet terms them pests. Then it advocates ‘‘protection’’ for native species (invertebrates and birds, for example) but poisons them with ecosystem toxins such as 1080.

Without telling most New Zealanders, Doc sells wilderness areas to Unesco World Heritage, so Doc also polices these areas to ensure owners New Zealanders do not have too big a footprint on their own land.

Should there be a Department of Conservation and a separate Department of Recreation? Doc is wasting public money while creating ecological mayhem.

Mary Molloy Farmers Against Ten Eighty (FATE)

Harihari ....................................

BIBLE READING: Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart. — Psalm 119:111.