RIVER DIVERSION AND FISH

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22110, 4 June 1937, Page 17

RIVER DIVERSION AND FISH

POSSIBLE EFFECT ON STOCKS NEED FOR CONSIDERATION IN PUBLIC WORKS PROJECTS The lack of any arrangement by the Public Works Department to consult fishery authorities in the carrying out of proposals to modify natural waterways, is pointed out in the final report of Mr D. F. Hobbs, field biologist of the New Zealand Freshwater Research natural waterways. The lack of any Committee. Mr Hobbs states that it is

necessary that the department should, in such proposals, consider probable effects on fish stocks. The report refers to the proposal to divert waters from the Kakanui river, in the Waitaki acclimatisation district, for irrigation. "I took the responsibility," states Mr Hobbs, "of advising the local acclimatisation society that it had a clear duly to bring to the notice of the proper authorities the possible effects on the fish stocks of such a diversion. The representations of the society concerned were most sympathetically received, and the original proposal was modified accordingly. "While the outcome of the representations in the particular case was entirely satisfactory, it is most necessary that the Public Works Department should be asked to adopt, as a general practice, the consultation of fishery authorities in all proposals to modify such arrangement at present too often means that only when proposals of the

department itself, or of private individuals with its consent, are being carried into effect, do fishery authorities become aware of them. "It is neither necessary nor desirable that fishery authorities should be allowed to veto any proposals. It is. however, necessary and desirable that the department, in considering the probable benefits which should accrue from any proposal, should also consider the probable* effects of such a proposal on fish stocks."