please note until ratified, these are purely DRAFT Minutes
To Trout Fishing Clubs and Members
Minutes from the Annual General Meeting
October 2024
Hi,
Casey Cravens here, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater Anglers.
We held the annual general meeting by zoom back in October. We’d prefer to have a national meeting face to face. But this year we’re trying to be particularly disciplined about conserving funds for our participation in the test case over the Rakaia River’s Water Conservation Order.
AGM Highlights
Attendance: Members from Auckland, Marlborough, Taupo, Otago, South Canterbury, and the West Coast represented trout and salmon fishing interests throughout the country.
Nitrate Testing
Dr Peter Trolove, immediate past president, continues nitrate testing on behalf of the Federation. Excessive nitrate levels are toxic to aquatic life. This includes trout, salmon, native fish, birds and aquatic insects. Nitrates also threaten public health. Emerging research links elevated nitrate consumption with increased risk for breast, prostate and bowel cancer.
South Canterbury has one the highest bowel cancer rates in the world, and this is due to the massive increase in synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in the region due to dairy farming intensification following John Key’s replacing the elected Canterbury regional council with political allies who rubberstamped irrigation projects.
Peter’s nitrate testing provides more reliable data than government agencies, who game sampling models to ignore their responsibilities. This is especially important when our current national government is run by former lobbyists from the dairy, irrigation, fertilizer and tobacco industries.
The AGM approved continuing paying Peter’s expenses for travel and testing at $200 a month.
Grant Henderson was elected treasurer. And we’ve added Alan Simmons and Rex Gibson to the executive committee.
The treasurer referred to the financial statements for 2023/24 circulated before the meeting. While the society had a deficit of 1,884.91 for the 2023/24 financial year, that was largely due to the one-off expense ($3,052.25) associated with supporting Peter Trolove’s campaign for election to Environment Canterbury. The net book value of society assets is $15,160.25.
Rakaia Water Conservation Order
Much of the Federation’s focus this year has been on the Rakaia, where Environment Canterbury (ECan) and Manawa Power have not honored the integrity of the river’s national water conservation order (WCO).
Back in 2012, ECan amended the Rakaia Water Conservation Order to allow the diversion of more water into hydroelectricity and irrigation. Manawa said they could monitor both water use and its impact on ecosystem health. The state of the river proves otherwise. Sea trout and salmon numbers are down 90 percent. Native birds are starving. And the Stokell’s Smelt, a cornerstone of the river’s food web, may be heading for extinction.
Manawa’s attorneys devised a novel concept of “stored water,” whose complicated meaning defied adequate monitoring.
In 2014 ECan told Manawa to ask the Environment Court for a Declaration that their “stored water” concept at Lake Coleridge didn’t violate the Rakaia Water Conservation Order, even in its amended form. In their arrogance, Manawa didn’t get legal consents. To further mismanage the situation, ECan never followed up. [See David Williams’ coverage on The Newsroom here.]
The fate of the Rakaia will determine whether any of the 16 Water Conservation Orders on other watersheds still mean anything. This list includes our best rivers: the Buller, Kawarau (which includes the Greenstone), Mataura, Mohaka, Motueka, Oreti, Rangitata, Rangitikei, Ahuriri, Grey, Manganuioteao, Motu, Lake Ellesmere, and Waikaropupu Springs (which has some of the clearest water on Earth).
Elections
President: Casey Cravens – Otago
Secretary/Treasurer: Grant Henderson – North Shore
Immediate Past President: Peter Trolove – Canterbury
Executive:
Charlie Baycroft – Christchurch
Jason Foord – Auckland
Peter Bragg – Turangi
Paul Hodgson – South Canterbury
Andi Cockroft – Wellington
Rex Gibson – Christchurch
Alan Simmons – Turangi
Life Members (attached to executive)
Ian Rodger – (life) – Auckland
Ken Sims – (life) – Manawatu
Sandy Bull – (life) – Gisborne
Tony Orman – (life) – Marlborough
River Projects
Paul Hodgsonrecommended the incoming executive look at a “Healthy River Campaign.” The idea would be that in each Fish and Game region, the Federation and Fish and Game could adopt a degraded river and collaborate on its restoration.
The incoming executive committee hopes each region formally adopts a local degraded river and develops a restoration project involving local licence holders.
The executive committee also passed a remit to better focus the Federation’s Facebook page to avoid simply promoting commercial interests in recreational fishing. We want Facebook site administrators to focus more on sustainable freshwater management and increase recreational participation.
Brief Extracts from the President’s Report
The Federation is a voluntary organisation–as opposed to local councils and government departments that are funded by taxpayers. We struggle to match the government for time and manpower, or deep-pocketed multinationals or paid lobbyists. We must focus our energy. But we punch above our weight. And we’re always looking for other active members for the Executive Committee.
The Federation is constitutionally bound to be independent of any political parties. However, you can’t take politics out of freshwater management.
Rakaia
This year we’ve focused our efforts on a major legal battle as well as pending legislation like the Fast-track Approvals Bill and the attempt to weaken the Resource Management Act’s regulation of farm runoff. In the Rakaia lawsuit, the primary plaintiffs in the case are North Canterbury Fish and Game and the Environmental Defence Society (EDS). Their main interest is to determine who is responsible for monitoring and enforcing the Water Conservation Order. We support Fish and Game and EDS, but we want to employ a different strategy, one that focuses on the actual water allocation budget for the Rakaia River. We believe this approach might yield more immediate relief to the Rakaia, which was once New Zealand’s most magnificent braided river.
The Federation is participating in the case as a 274 entity,
or interested party under the Resource Management Act, as are a host of irrigation companies. Steve Gerard’s Future Rivers and the New Zealand Salmon Anglers have combined forces with us in the lawsuit.
One of the Coalition government’s early acts was to end the Environmental Legal Assistance grants. Nonetheless, we applied for the last round and succeeded in getting about $15,000. We need to raise substantially more.
Select Committee
Peter Trolove and I went to Wellington to make in-person submissions to the Environment Select Committee on the Fast-Track Bill. We oppose the bill because it removes evidence, science and democracy from environmental policy. The government rushed the bill through Parliament under urgency. Now the Coalition, led by three “wise men,” is using it to overturn cases long ago settled in the Environment Court or by regional councils. Some of these projects included mining on conservation land, resurrecting the zombie project of the Ruataniwha Dam, or sea-bed mining the habitat of rare, non-migratory blue whales who live only in the Taranaki Bight.
Constitutional scholars have pointed out repeatedly how repugnant and authoritarian this act is because it bypasses the Select Committee process where the public and environmental groups have traditionally had input into controversial projects.
Pine Forests
Commercial interests—80 percent of them foreign owned– keep pushing monoculture pine plantations as a way of offsetting carbon. But pine plantations need much more water than native forests and when harvested release silt and other pollution into local watersheds, suffocating trout and salmon eggs as well as invertebrates
These plantations have also created wide-spread wilding pine problems in areas such as the Mackenzie Basin and Marlborough. In the Wairarapa and Southern Hawkes Bay in particular, productive sheep and beef farms have been planted in speculative pines for carbon farming.
Degraded Rivers
I must mention governments’ failure to address the declining state of our rivers. There’s enough blame to go around to all the political parties.
In June 2017 Labour Party said they wanted waterways “genuinely swimmable in five years.” In January 2019 82 percent of the public said they were extremely or very concerned about the pollution of waterways. But little or nothing was done in six years of Labour-led governments. Now in 2024 with a new government led by National, the Fast-track exploitation bill is upon us.
Apathy
A major obstacle in environmental campaigns is indifference by the trout and salmon fishing public, indeed New Zealanders. Look at some recent Fish and Game elections where, in many regions, not enough nominations were received to fill the council seats. The voting turnout by shooters and anglers was woefully low. With apathy paramount, the world can become ruled by top-down, dictatorial, often arrogant governments.
Administration
During the past year Secretary and Treasurer David Haynes resigned. I thank David for his contribution, and it was sad to see him go. David helped Peter enormously over the Rakaia issue. Brett Bensemann of Dunedin and Margaret Adams of West coast are stepping down from the executive. We’ll miss your contributions.
Alan Simmons and Rex Gibson are joining the executive committee for the coming year.
The Coming Year
The strength of our passion for rivers should inspire us to cudgel developers, bureaucrats or politicians when they threaten the egalitarian access traditions, water quality or the status of trout. The Federation is often an effective voice when political pressure compromises Fish and Game New Zealand, the Department of Conservation, the Ministry for the Environment or regional councils. You can fire and intimidate scientists and bureaucrats. But you can’t fire volunteers.
Please consider volunteering your time, energy or money to help preserve New Zealand’s rivers.
Cheers,
Casey Cravens