Environmental effort does Taranaki proud

7 July 2015

Taranaki’s latest five-yearly state of the environment report shows great progress is being made and proves just how seriously everyone in the region takes environmental issues, the authors say.

The report, Taranaki as One - Taranaki Tāngata Tū Tahi, says the region enjoys a generally good and improving environment thanks largely to hard work and serious investment across all sectors.

The report was launched today (7 July) by the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It is the fourth produced by the Taranaki Regional Council and is available online at www.trc.govt.nz.

“Taranaki can be proud of itself,” Council Chairman David MacLeod says of the report’s findings. “Challenges remain, of course. But based on the findings of this report, including its countless examples of Taranaki’s ‘get on and do it’ attitude, we can be confident about the future.”

He says three trends in particular stand out:

• More hard investment in the environment across the board.

• Greater community engagement in the environment – more people voluntarily doing more.

• More regulatory and non-regulatory measures by both local and central government to promote environmental protection and enhancement.

“Against this backdrop, we’re seeing hugely encouraging results,” says Mr MacLeod. “And this is a comprehensive report, backed up by two decades of environmental monitoring data and robust science that has been peer-reviewed.”

The report’s findings include:

• Trends in both the ecological health and the physical and chemical state of the region’s waterways are the best ever recorded.

• The region’s land, air and coast are also in good or excellent shape.

• The world-class riparian management programme is on track for completion at the end of the decade, with more than 3.6 million plants supplied to date for streamside planting on the ring plain.

• An increasingly co-ordinated and co-operative approach to protecting and enhancing native biodiversity by community groups and agencies in the region. The Council has led the charge with a $1.2 million biodiversity spend in 2014/14.

The report also covers heritage, landscape and amenity, where it finds a progressive community outlook ensures that values are being maintained; solid waste management, where it finds that the focus now is firmly on minimisation because the environmental effects of disposal have been addressed; and natural hazards, where it finds that the region is generally well prepared for large-scale events.

The report draws on information compiled and supplied by the New Plymouth, Stratford and South Taranaki District Councils, the Department of Conservation and many other agencies and community groups.

“This takes us back to a key theme reflected in the report’s title, Taranaki as One - Taranaki Tāngata Tū Tahi,” says Mr MacLeod. “A whole range of agencies and individuals are involved in managing the environment.”

He says, however, that the region can’t rest on its laurels despite the generally positive tone of the report. “The community has high and growing expectations and aspirations around the quality of our waterways, for example,” he says. “Protecting and further enhancing our freshwater resource will effectively ‘future-proof’ the region, ensuring Taranaki can continue to offer economic opportunities and enviable lifestyles to the children and grandchildren of today’s citizens.”

The Council has prepared a Draft Freshwater and Land Management Plan under which it proposes to lock in completion of the Riparian Management Programme, and to ensure that farm dairy effluent is discharged to land rather than waterways wherever possible. Formal public consultation on the Draft Plan will take place late this year.

To read Taranaki as One - Taranaki Tāngata Tūtahi in full, go to www.trc.govt.nz.

ENDS

© Scoop Media