Lake Wairarapa and Wild Life

Forest and Bird, Issue 139, 1 February 1961, Page 3

Lake Wairarapa and Wild Life

According to the Evening Post of Wellington, of 18th November, the Government will give a £3-for-£l subsidy for a Lower Wairarapa Valley development scheme estimated to cost £2,449,000. The work is to be spread over 20 years. Some 41,610 acres will be relieved of flooding and more than 13,000 acres will be reclaimed. The scheme has been prepared by the Wairarapa Catchment Board, and approved by the Soils Conservation and Rivers Control Council, while the Department of Lands and Survey is directly interested and will contribute £140,000 towards the costs.

We have no doubt that the scheme is a good one —those concerned with it are all reputable bodies efficiently staffed and controlled, in each case in their own orbit doing excellent work worthy of high praise—yet we fear that in this scheme there is a weakness common to so many other development schemes here and overseas. The weakness is that there is no reference to the Wildlife Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs having been consulted.

Consider the facts: 5,700 acres of lake bed can be reclaimed, also 5,500 acres of lowlying land and 1,900 acres of lagoons. Remember that Lake Wairarapa is the mecca of the duck-shooting fraternity, because it is in those lagoons that the ducks and other waterfowl find their feeding grounds and breeding areas. As a Society we are not interested in duck shooting; nevertheless we do recognise that given sufficient food and protection ducks are endowed by Nature with a fecundity which makes reasonable provision for shooting needs, and we are very interested in the preservation of the various protected species of waterfowl which need, and are entitled to, sufficient habitat to ensure survival. In America and elsewhere, and already to some extent in New Zealand, there is the spectacle of one department draining swamps and lakes while other departments build artificial ones in the same localities in order to restore water tables and provide water fowl habitat.

Preservation of bird and bush is our business, and it is not a business dictated by sentiment, as some appear to imagine. There are sound reasons why nature should not be unduly disturbed, reasons important to all of us; we think we are not being unreasonable in asking that the wildlife experts, employed for the purpose, should be consulted about all development plans involving wildlife habitat. Rivers which intersect and water the fertile Wairarapa Plains become menacing torrents during heavy rain in the ranges; the catchment board knows the need to protect the headwaters by keeping them covered with bush, and it is merely doing its job in endeavouring to alleviate the effects of flooding in the lower reaches. There is room for great improvement, but we believe that if the wildlife experts are consulted and each side is willing to give and take a little, the work can be done without undue destruction of waterfowl habitat. Thus many headaches and considerable expenditure may be avoided in the years ahead. There will always be muddlement and frustration until consultation between departments on all plans affecting each other’s interests is established as a principle. Is it too much to hope that it will be done before the plans to drain the Wairarapa Lake lagoons proceed, too far?