Those were the days – where has our wilderness gone?
Recently I was involved in a discussion about pig dog tracking collars, radio frequencies, and government bureaucrats. It was a topic I didn’t know much about but unfortunately the theme appears to be all too familiar when it comes to virtually every outdoor hunting and fishing-type sport I can think of.
Alas, it seems that our outdoor rights, freedoms, resources and opportunities are under assault from all angles and our discussion was best summed up by a man who I respect greatly, who lamented: ‘‘we’ve seen the best of it, for sure.’’ Unfortunately, I’d have to agree.
There is still some excellent fishing and hunting for those with skill, experience, equipment and sufficient resources to be able to fund big boats, fuel bills and helicopter access. Nowadays you need better access, need to go further, longer, and harder. Many of us now plan fishing and hunting adventures overseas to access higher quality resources.
I’m not so worried for myself, or even my commercially guided customers, because hopefully I can innovate, adapt and keep locating new or adequate adventures, or learn how to exploit the remaining outdoor resources more efficiently.
What I’m concerned about are the generations that follow us, who might want to hunt and fish on New Zealand public lands and waters too. These days it seems like outdoor resources are in a three-way war with economic, political and environmental forces going head-to-head, and alas the environment and recreational users are usually the losers.
Humans have changed the New Zealand landscape irrevocably ever since they first set foot on these shaky isles but the last few decades have seen changes almost unimaginable to previous generations not familiar with industrial scale dairy farming, massive exotic forestry plantations, mining, urbanisation,
Wild side didymo algae, pollution and climate change, among others.
The pace of change has been massive and has overwhelmed fragile natural ecosystems in many areas. Recently flying over the little Grey River catchment near Reefton by helicopter saw us flying over native indigenous forest being cut and burned to develop more dairy pasture, like some apocalyptic vision from the Amazonian rainforest.
This week, we were standing on mud banks in the lower Motueka river, with discoloured, muddy water hiding hooked trout as we were landing them.
The Motueka was always a clear, cobble bottomed, nationally important trout stream and protected by a water conservation order, but increasing turbidity, sediment infill and mud banks and shoals are a sure sign that not all bodes well.
The sediment is particularly worrisome and it is obvious environmental protection rules are far too lax, not that overseasowned forestry companies will mind when they move their profits abroad.
Jobs and a top performing economy are highly important to a modern country like New Zealand but no-one has ever figured out what the true cost of exporting a tonne of logs is, or what the true cost of producing a litre of milk actually is.
The environment is subsidising this production and the cost on local communities and recreational opportunities is too high.
The crap clogging the Motueka River flows into our estuaries and coastal areas within Tasman Bay. Fortunately the Coriolis effect (which is the way the earth spins) acts like a giant centrifuge and keeps the Motueka Plume close to the Abel Tasman shoreline so it is unlikely to contaminate the rest of the bay.
The scallop fishery has already collapsed, probably because of sedimentation, but what is next? Luckily, the finfish fishery in the bay is going strong, with snapper numbers well managed, but I’ve noticed the best fishing is always on the eastern side of the bay.
My theory is the Nelson City side has smaller rivers with less sediment input, although the Maitai River water isn’t exactly pristine, the Wakapuaka was stuffed long ago, and the abomination of irresponsible logging through the Rai Saddle area sent large sediment loads clogging the Collins and Whangamoa river system.
I cover a lot of ground all over the top half of the South Island and we still catch our unfair share of big trout but I’d have to say the fishing isn’t getting any easier.
There are lots of places that I don’t bother going any more, and there may be more rivers that I now avoid than I actually visit.
Most of the best rivers are upstream of agriculture in the DOC ‘‘managed’’ public estate, although goodness knows what effect the pesticide 1080 poison is having on insect populations there.
Climate change has affected these rivers with increasingly large floods of recent years having ripped many of these places apart and infilled pools with gravel and debris. To be consistently successful on trout these days you need to target the last of the best places, but unfortunately everyone else has exactly the same idea. With modern satellite weather forecasts, internet and Facebook, everyone is turning up in the same places at the same times which leads to competition and conflict.
Fishing lodges are increasingly pushing helicopter fishing on their guests, which is over-pressuring hallowed wilderness fisheries, although all anglers and guides (including myself) are part of the issue.
The latest trend is a phenomenon known by many local fishing guides as ‘‘Eurotrash’’ where lowbudget overseas ‘‘freedom’’ anglers from Europe are congesting and dominating popular backcountry fisheries in increasing numbers.
These individuals are often dropped off by others (so there is no vehicle to indicate anglers) and they fish upstream for days or weeks, camping beside the river in treeside hammocks. Many of these anglers have become nocturnal too, now fishing by night when the trout are at their most vulnerable. Sometimes they even hide in backcountry huts.
This summer we flew three tight low-altitude circles over a small, dank, West Coast hut near Reefton. There was no gear outside, no smoke coming from the chimney, no sign of life, but soon after we landed downstream five Swedish anglers raced upstream ahead of us. Sometimes you just can’t win and I’m sure I’ll be thinking hard about new strategies for next fishing season.
Back in 1990, I completed a masters degree at the University of Canterbury, with my research thesis being titled Trout Fishing in Nelson – Management of a Recreational Resource.
When I was analysing all the data collected from questionnairebased surveys of recreational trout anglers, overseas anglers and fishing guides, it was interesting how many local anglers were quite negative about the fishery and the issues facing them.
At the time, the fishery was probably still in good shape and I guess I probably viewed many of the complainants as grumpy old men. There is even a technical scientific term known as the ‘‘sliding baseline’’, where newer participants to a sport don’t understand what the quality of a resource was like for the participants before them.
In hindsight, I now know firsthand what we have lost since 1990. Maybe being a grumpy old bastard isn’t so difficult after all.