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Finally caught up with the ABC Foreign Correspondent doco on the impact of dairy farming and irrigation on the lowland waters in Canterbury NZ.
Really sad to see and hear about the state of those rivers, many of which, including the Selwyn, I’ve greatly enjoyed fishing in the early days of FlyLife. It really is recent history. Sadly many Tasmanian lowland streams are suffering the same fate.
‘Business is business’, is a response I am totally sick of hearing.😬Not just Canterbury but Otago and Southland as well suffering the same fate.
It seems every bit of flat land now has boom irrigators running flat out all summer. Spreading dairy farming into arid lands results in the need to continually pump water onto porous soil so that grass will grow in sufficient quantities to support intensive dairying. Water extraction coupled with effluent and waste water dairy run off have negatively impacted a lot of waterways.
I don’t have data to support this, but visually over the last 15 years the rivers don’t seem to be carrying the same volume of water that they used to. This is evident in some rivers that used to support healthy populations of trout no longer hold fish.
The program was sad viewing and I have to say that in the 22 years that I have been visiting NZ, and in particular the Mataura system, it has been my misfortune to witness the incremental damage done by the dairy industry. So much for clean and green. Tasmania is not all that different when it comes to protecting rivers. The Tyenna and Styx rivers are copping a hiding at the moment as a result of old growth forest logging in their catchments and, can you believe it, the minister in charge purports to be a fly fisherman. It is so hard not to be cynical at the moment.
Of course these revelations are not news to FlyLife readers but I thought the TV doco presented a very solid overview without needing to lean on anglers or the trout fishery.
It’s interesting in NZ that increased pressure on backcountry fisheries in recent years has mainly been blamed on too many tourist anglers. But when you consider the impact of intensive agriculture on lowland streams and spring creeks over the last two decades it’s not difficult to see why anglers are heading upstream.Troubled Waters link here if you haven’t seen it.
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