Lost Rivers represents a decline of the ‘intergenerational equity’ every New Zealander shares in our freshwater resources.
This mapping lists rivers where a significant loss of opportunity to catch fish has been identified, and highlights the significant decline in our freshwater fisheries. The causes generally relate to developments within catchments that have impacted on those river environments.
This mapping has been complied using NIWA angler usage and perception surveys, and expert angler input. Only rivers where there was an obvious decline have been listed, there remain a significant number of others where there wasn’t enough collaborating info to included them.
The purpose of the mapping is to further raise awareness of just how big an issues this really is, and is a work in progress, we will keep updating the map as more info is compiled. You can help, tell us about any degraded rivers we should included:
