That's what happened at the meeting.   http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/250742/minister-should-resign,-says-fish-and-game.

Clearly there are powerful lobbies who want to neuter F&G.       Get behind F&G, these guys need our support right now.

"We will have to fight for our fisheries a thousand times but we can only lose them once".

Rainbow

We see eye to eye at last Rainbow. For me this is a complete deal breaker, Nats just lost my vote.

Snuffit. wrote: We see eye to eye at last Rainbow. For me this is a complete deal breaker, Nats just lost my vote.

rainbow photos please of these stock in waterways, like the media and f&g most have no idea of what a dairy animals looks like, can't blame the city slickers for this I wouldn't know what a flash coffee shop in the city looked like either.

....or perhaps they see more important issues to the nation than focussing on purely rec fishing issues.
We think this is the single most important issue in politics, but no poll I have seen anywhere mentions rec fishing access etc on the list of top concerns for people.
Far more are interested in employment, education, health etc, and for folks to assume the pollies are pursuing these topics solely to foil the desires or rec fishermen....well, that in itself is a little tinfoil hat like I think.
Farmers are painted as the evil despoilers of our nation by some...those in cities mostly, and strongly influenced in this by long term Labour Party antipathy to farmers who are seen as dedicated national supporters.
Has farming damaged the environment, yes, plainly it has. Has this benefitted enormously over the last century this entire nation even more definitely yes.
Are farming methods changing now to meet current environmental concerns, most definitely yes, they are. Are the anti farming pro environmental groups looking at current practises? Hell no, it is all about historical damage and insisting these practices continue to this day , which by and large they do not, so farming should be penalised, should be curtailed, should be punished. Well stuff that. If any of those calling for massive penalising of farming in this country are truly honest, then they had better start refusing to use the roading, the healthcare, the industries all of witch have been started by, targeted at, to cater for or to profit from, the farming sector, not just now but for the whole last century.
Farming is the backbone of this nation. Remove it and we will become economic basket cases in very very short order. Economic reality.

You want to see photos?     Here are some from the Upper Kapuni in Taranaki above the intake of the Hawera water supply.     I showed these and many more to a parliamentary select committee as part of a submission.   I got a nasty letter from the council about my "Emotive Presentation"      Although that was more than 10 years ago it took the Regional Council a full year to get these rubbish dumps partly removed. Some have just been covered up but the toe gets undercut with every big flood and the stuff ends up down stream.    In some dumps there were drums of agricultural chemicals as well as the usual farm rubbish including car bodies.     Such scenes were quite common across the whole Taranaki ring plane.    I have hundreds of photos like these from many streams.    Trouble is council staff don't wade up the rivers to see what gets dumped over the banks.    I don't fish there anymore so cant say if there have been any changes?    

Rainbow

o Neill, sad to hear that.
Did you personally ask them for access?
Lots of other access points above Toa's bridge, my fishing in the Waipa is quite a bit further upstream.

Capt Asparagus wrote: ....or perhaps they see more important issues to the nation than focussing on purely rec fishing issues. We think this is the single most important issue in politics, but no poll I have seen anywhere mentions rec fishing access etc on the list of top concerns for people. Far more are interested in employment, education, health etc, and for folks to assume the pollies are pursuing these topics solely to foil the desires or rec fishermen....well, that in itself is a little tinfoil hat like I think. Farmers are painted as the evil despoilers of our nation by some...those in cities mostly, and strongly influenced in this by long term Labour Party antipathy to farmers who are seen as dedicated national supporters. Has farming damaged the environment, yes, plainly it has. Has this benefitted enormously over the last century this entire nation even more definitely yes. Are farming methods changing now to meet current environmental concerns, most definitely yes, they are. Are the anti farming pro environmental groups looking at current practises? Hell no, it is all about historical damage and insisting these practices continue to this day , which by and large they do not, so farming should be penalised, should be curtailed, should be punished. Well stuff that. If any of those calling for massive penalising of farming in this country are truly honest, then they had better start refusing to use the roading, the healthcare, the industries all of witch have been started by, targeted at, to cater for or to profit from, the farming sector, not just now but for the whole last century. Farming is the backbone of this nation. Remove it and we will become economic basket cases in very very short order. Economic reality.

Captain, it's not about demonising farmers for bad practises. I think even the most staunch environmentalist can agree that farming practises have improved over the years. The new generation of farmers is much more aware of the environmental impacts of their operations, and for the most part they are doing what they can to minimise and mitigate the effects.

The problem is that even those dairy farmers that follow best practise are polluting waterways, due to leaching of nutrients. This can be reduced to a good degree through care and changed farm operations, but can't be eliminated. So in theory we can significantly improve water quality through better farming practise. That would be the case if the dairy herd was size was static.

Unfortunately, dairy conversions continue to speed ahead. You only have to compare the Canterbury and Southland landscapes to those of a decade ago to see this. And this government wants to see more irrigation and more dairying. In fact they are subsidising this expansion with taxpayer's money. The improvements made by existing operations will be dwarfed by the negative effects of all the new conversions....

Yes, it was indeed an increased awareness of the environmental issues, highlighted by environmentalists indeed that caused the change and improvements in practices. And yes, no-one really has big issues with that.
Leaching of nutrients though is a bit of an issue, given that the process started a century ago, and the nutrients in the system are working their way through the drainage systems so slowly...it is said up to 60years for 100m, that the issue is going to keep going for the next generation or three, even though fertiliser uses have been hugely cut back , nutrient budgets are now worked out and stuck to in order to eliminate as much of this as possible, the after effect of the ignorance of this issue at all even thirty years ago means the country, whether it wants it or not, is going to be stuck with it for the foreseeable future.
Sixty or more years ago, my grandfather, being a successful farmer, followed ministry recommendations from earnest scientist to include DDT in his fertiliser dressings, to combat grass grub. Best practice then, well done that man. Now, we have DDE residue in our soil that if it were much higher would prevent us from supplying milk, DDE having a half life of fifty years, it is not an issue that is going to be going away soon. By changing grazing and stock control patterns we actually largely eliminated the DDE issue on the property entirely, but I find it interesting that a farmer, thinking he was doing the best thing for the land and his farm, was leaving a long term problem for those owning his land in the future. He certainly was not to know that, he was following government advice after all!
The same goes for all the farmers who poured capital dressings of fert onto their farms to boost production etc, a generation ago this was seen as a great thing, now? Not so much.
I think that instead of slating farmers as the whole and sole root for the damage, fie unto them!, then perhaps the whole country should perhaps look at this as a shared issue. After all the dock workers who unloaded those tons of superphosphate, the shipping lines and sailors who shipped it here, the truckies who carted it from wharf to farm, the mechanics who serviced the trucking fleets that carried the fertilisers, the truck stop cafés and the waitresses who served the pies and chips to the drivers, none of them are as abused as the farmers who, under best practices and best available advice, applied these nutrients to their land, yet all of them made money from the deal, all of them raised families from the wages earned from, even tangentially, providing the farmers with these fertilisers.
That's why I get a bit toey when I see another whole Farmer Beat Up coming along, so excuse me if I vent now and then :-)

Ah. Therein lies the rub. A personal approach may have paid dividends. If F&G are leading the charge against farmers, then any approach from them to establish access rights may well be given the big FO. However, phoning or popping in to a farm individually, more than likely will get a yeah, ok mate close the gates though, sort of reply. You never know, used to work for me.