Extra firefighters called in to house fire in Palmerston North
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Supplied
Firefighters are battling a house fire in central Palmerston North.
The blaze was reported at 3:53pm Sunday and the Main Street house was "well involved" in flames, when crews arrived, a Fire and Emergency spokesperson said.
A third crew have been called in.
Initially, two nearby houses were reportedly on fire, but firefighters investigating the second house found it was not on fire but and smoke there was caused by a pot on the stove.
Photo:
Supplied
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RNZ News
21 hours ago
- RNZ News
'It's really nasty': Toxic plants destroyed in high school competition
Aroha Chase tackles a roadside infestation in Pakaraka, in the Far North. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf A competition dreamed up by high school students and a dedicated teacher has stopped as many as 10 million seeds of a toxic pest plant spreading into the Northland environment. Kerikeri High School's Northland Moth Plant Competition , which wrapped up last month, encouraged people around the region to collect seed pods from the invasive vine , as well as pulling the plants up by the roots. Each seed pod can release up to 1000 seeds, which travel as far as 25km on the wind. Year 13 student Richard Norton, of the school's Save All Viable Environments (SAVE) group, said the fast-growing vine was a threat to native forest, but also infested shelterbelts, gardens and verges. "The vines grow up trees and smother them, which causes the plants to die, so they endanger our native species." It was hard to say which weed was Northland's worst, but moth plant was certainly a contender for the title. "It's definitely one of the worst because they grow quite quickly, and each pod has 1000 seeds in it. So they reproduce very rapidly, and can take over entire forests and cause a lot of damage," Norton said. A moth plant showing the vine's distinctive seed pods. Photo: Supplied / Hayley Bloch-Jorgensen The climbing vine, which was native to South America but introduced to New Zealand as an ornamental plant, produced small white or pink flowers, and large numbers of choko-like pods. The seeds were carried on the wind by fine, silk-like filaments, much like dandelion seeds. It was also known as kapok vine or, in Australia, as jumbo weed. It favoured frost-free parts of the country. Kerikeri High teacher Kate Crawford, who ran this year's competition, said another distinctive feature was the white sap it produced from even minor contact. "It's really nasty. The sap is quite toxic. It can be a skin irritant and if it gets in your eyes, it can actually cause blindness," she said. "And it grows really fast. I've watched some on the roadside that within one year had completely covered a tree. We had a lady contact us at the start of the competition, she'd removed 500 pods from one tree, and just didn't know what to do with them." The kids of Oromahoe School, in the Far North, with their haul of moth plant pods. Photo: Supplied / Oromahoe School Crawford said the contest had previously targeted schools, but this year it was opened up to the public. Contestants had to provide photographic evidence of the pods and vines, complete with roots, they had collected over a four-month period. They were provided with pre-paid rubbish bags because composting was not enough to kill the seeds. Norton said by the time the competition closed on July 18, the top three teams alone had collected just under 12,500 pods and vines. "It was cool. A lot of people joined and the amount of pods everyone collected was insane. Definitely a lot more than I thought." With more than 10,000 pods collected, each containing up to 1000 seeds, that was a huge dent in the plant's future spread. "That's about 10 million seeds that won't be going out there and growing into other plants anymore. So it's a lot more future moth plants that we don't have to deal with." Norton said the contest had also raised awareness of the problem plant, and he hoped it had encouraged people to continue removing the pods before they ripened. Moth Plant Competition winners Piripi King and Aroha Chase, with daughter Kalliope, 3, adopted the team name Chasing Kings. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf The winning team was Chasing Kings of Pakaraka, on State Highway 1 south of Kerikeri. Members Aroha Chase and Piripi King - and daughter Kalliope, 3 - collected a staggering 5776 pods and vines, earning them $500 cash plus native seedlings for their property. The real prize, however, was the greatly reduced number of pest vines in their area. Chase said she had spent hours every weekend battling moth plant on verges and in hedges around their neighbourhood. "I really dislike this plant, mostly because it's very invasive. It's a clever plant. If you don't fully remove it, it has the ability to regrow from really old roots. It's got a lot of pods per vine and each pod seems to have hundreds and hundreds of seeds." Chase was "very surprised" to win. "It was rather competitive but for us it was more that we were pleased with our efforts, and we were curious to know how others got on, because, after all, it's a good environmental win. We also hoped it might provide Northland Regional Council with data to support other weed control initiatives." Every moth plant pod contains up to 1000 seeds. Photo: Supplied / Hayley Bloch-Jorgensen Crawford said the competition had been sponsored by Kerikeri Rotary and the regional council, while Ngāti Rēhia's Takou Kauri Sanctuary had provided prizes and a local business had upgraded the contest website. She was convinced the contest had made a difference. "I was talking to one of the council's biosecurity officers, and he said he was gathering up pest plants to take to a school, but he was actually having trouble finding moth plants to show kids what it looked like because we'd done such a good job around Kerikeri." Crawford hoped to persuade the regional council to take over the competition next year, but vowed to keep it going if no one else would. Kerikeri also has a STAMP group - short for Society Totally Against Moth Plant - which maps and removes infestations. The group also organises occasional weeding trips to hard-to-reach but severely overgrown locations such as the islands in Kerikeri Inlet. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
'Disaster waiting to happen': Fears carbon farming increases risk of wild fire
James Hunter worries the huge cost of managing forestry pests and fire risk is falling on farmers. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook The increasing number of farms being planted in trees for carbon farming is raising fears about the spread of pests and fire risk. Some farmers are spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on pest control to prevent deer and pigs eating their crops, while also forking out for higher insurance premiums due to the risk of fire. Out near Porangahau in Central Hawke's Bay, farmer James Hunter is worried about the future of his farm. His neighbour's 2000 hectare Motere Station has just been planted in pine trees, after it was sold last year to Chinese forestry company K&A Sustainability Ltd. "If we think it's so good to offset our carbon by planting pine trees, why do I have to carry the cost with everything I hold precious being destroyed?" he asks. The Hunter family has farmed Rangitoto Station for more than 170 years. The rolling to steep hill country offers unbeatable views of Pacific Ocean, while inland the farm's many valleys are filled with canopies of poplar trees to prevent erosion. For the past 40 years, Hunter has been on a mission to create kilometres of wetlands on the farm, regenerate many hectares of native bush, and fence off special areas that are now protected under QEII National Trust covenants. "It's such a buzz," said Hunter. His eyes lit up as he explained how the wetlands naturally filtered and cleaned what ran off the land, collecting sediment so the water that ran out to the rivers and oceans was clean. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook The Hunter's farm early in the 1990's before wetlands and native bush were established, compared to today where the farm has about 15 hectares of wetlands filtering the run off. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook It has taken countless hours of work and substantial investment, but he feared these precious habitats were at risk of pests from the new forestry plantation. "What's bothering me is that all of this work that I've done - the deer are going to destroy it, and if it's not the deer, the pigs will come out and eat the lambs," he said. Forest Owners Association chief executive Elizabeth Heeg told RNZ that pest control was part of regional council management plans. She said the association did not collect data on how much forestry owners spent on pest control, but it varied depending on the region and size of forest. "They take these issues seriously for their communities. We are having more trouble with pigs in recent years than we'd had previously. "Deer numbers in some places are expanding, we need to have good game management out there and think about where these populations have expanded to a point where they need professional intervention to be knocked back," she said. James Hunter is worried his wetlands and native bush is at risk of being destroyed by forestry pests such as deer and pigs. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook Another risk that farmers were worried about was wildfire. Hunter has lived through many severe droughts and told RNZ that with an increasing number of pines being planted in the area, he was seriously concerned about the fire risk. He said there was a lack of responsibility from forest owners to mitigate them. "The forest people are not putting in anything to control fires. If there's a big fire and the only good dam out here is my water supply dam, and it's the middle of a drought and they drain it, where does that leave me? "Why should I have to carry the cost of firefighting, when they've done nothing other than plant every available inch, even though they were told not to plant the airstrip... they did," he said. The entire stretch of hillside along the horizon was planted in pine trees this year. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook It was rural communities like his that he had seen decimated by the forestry industry, as Hunter said once the trees were planted there was no employment opportunities until harvest, or if it was a carbon farm then it was locked up and left. He is among many who are warning that this rural way of life - of living off the land and mustering stock with horses and dogs - is disappearing. "It's the dream - and if we plant New Zealand, we're going to shut out people's dreams. We're going to shut out the opportunity to progress. "There are so many issues attached to forestry and you can't unwind it," he said. Fellow Hawke's Bay farmer Bruce Wills has had a lifetime of farming next to forestry. His family farmed at Trelinoe Park in Te Pohua from 1955 to 2018 and witnessed the boom of forestry after Cyclone Bola in 1988, when pine trees were touted as the solution to controlling erosion. Bit by bit his farm was surrounded in forestry, which Wills said resulted in a flood of pests eating his crops, costing him tens of thousands of dollars a year in pest control alone. "We spent an enormous amount of time and effort and money controlling possums, goats, deer, pigs that poured in from the forestry and grazed on pastures overnight. "These are the sort of challenges that New Zealand hasn't woken up to yet with the proliferation of carbon farms," he said. Bruce Wills says increasing forestry plantings resulted in a flood of pests eating his crops Photo: Having forestry neighbours on every boundary also carried a huge insurance cost because of the fire risk. "Certainly towards the the latter years when we were fully surrounded and had the significant risk all around us... we doubled and sometimes more, our public liability insurance. "So we were carrying $10 million plus of cover for public liability because of that pine tree risk to our business if a fire escaped from our property," he said. Wills said in his experience, many forest owners were not prepared for fire and he believed many people underestimated the fire risk of forestry. "Most New Zealanders are complacent to this risk and it will come and bit us now with this increased risk of pine tree fuel ready to be ignited. "It worries me a lot, and in the climate that we've got. It's a disaster waiting to happen," said Wills. File photo. Photo: Supplied / Fire and Emergency NZ PF Olsen manages more than 160,000 hectares of forestry in New Zealand, including the K&A Sustainability Ltd owned block next to Hunter. Managing director Scott Downs told RNZ that forest owners were working with Fire and Emergency to develop fire risk management plans. However, he said what each forest spent on fire mitigation varied hugely depending on their location and size. "I think fire is a few years away in terms of risk, so they haven't necessarily started thinking fully about that yet... but it will definitely be on the agenda," he said. Downs said PF Olsen met regularly with landowners, such as farmers, and were always available to discuss their concerns. "We're a local company so we have local people on the ground who can go out and visit these sites regularly. We're not a faceless corporation or entity that they have no contact with or struggle to get hold of," he said. An area of farmland in Central Hawke's Bay that is being planted in pine trees. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook As for pest control, PF Olsen said while it did not have exact figures on what its forest owners spent, it was a cost that was included in the forest management budgets. "Obviously there is a lot more pest control in the first four years or so when the trees are growing, then it reduces after that. "But there are still ongoing issues there that we need to manage, in terms of we don't want to be a harbouring site for pigs and deer that create havoc with neighbours, because we want to be a good neighbour," said Downs. Figures from Fire and Emergency show the annual average for vegetation fires is about 4350. Between July 2023 and June 2025, Fire and Emergency attended 547 vegetation fires where some of the area burned was recorded as having land cover in exotic forest, and 78 of those fires were more than one hectare in size. The Forest Owners Association said many of its members did take responsibility for managing their land properly. Chief executive Elizabeth Heeg said $21 million a year was spent on fire protection. "We really encourage all rural landowners that forests to engage with our guidelines on our website. "It's really important we are all up to speed on what the current practice is," she said. When asked if there were any mandatory requirements for forest owners to reduce the risk, Heeg told RNZ there were forest service levies and some legal requirements. "If someone is not managing that risk effectively, then FENZ can come in with a range of responses. "We are all concerned about increasing fire risk, and that's why it's really important that we are working together on how we are going to manage fires, and fire prevention," she said. Fire and Emergency Hawke's Bay community risk manager Nigel Hall agreed that forestry was a big fire risk, and said FENZ was always talking to forestry owners. He said the fire service had extensive maps of forests which included the age and type of trees, topography of the land, access tracks, and water supply locations. "They're doing all they can to mitigate fires within their own forests and they are putting fire breaks around key infrastructure , for example powerlines that go through forests," said Hall. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Calvin Samuel He said for carbon forests, which are usually not pruned like the timber production forests, the fire risk can be greater because there was more fuel. "They are higher risk once they are going... but potentially they are lower risk to start with because they are greener underneath. "But for any forest, the likelihood of us actually going in to the forest to extinguish it, we just won't be doing that. Once a fire has taken hold the only way we can fight it is with helicopters," he said. Since 2017 Fire and Emergency has established Service Level Agreements with forest owners, and FENZ national manager risk reduction Jonathan Tan said there were currently 14 Service Level Agreements in place with forest owners, with four to be completed. "Many forest owners either had wildfire capabilities prior to 2017 or have since invested in firefighting resources, including Forest Rural Firefighting appliances, water tankers, and trained personnel within their workforce," he said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
Twenty years of 'Bird of the Year' in one book
The Australasian Crested Grebe won Bird of the Century in 2023. Photo: Dave Thomas E koekoe te tūī, e ketekete te kākā, e kūkū te kererū - The tūī chatters, the kākā cackles and the kererū coos. That is a whakataukī (proverb) mentioning just three of the 80 birds - and one bat - included in the new Bird of the Year book. Writer Ellen Rykers, the former campaign lead, told Saturday Morning that New Zealand's largest book publisher, Penguin Random House, had asked Forest & Bird to turn the competition into a book subject. "At the time, I was part of the team organising Bird of the Year and, with my background in science writing, it just sort of seemed like a natural fit for me to take on this project," she said. Rykers said the book was a "feast for the eyes", with more than a dozen illustrators, who were selected, "not only because they draw beautiful birds, but because they also are dedicated to supporting conservation through their work". "Even if you don't dive into the words, it's just beautiful to look at." Photo: Supplied / Penguin Books New Zealand To decide which native birds - and bat - were included, Rykers went back through the last 20 years of the Bird of the Year competition and chose ones that had interesting stories - whether they be related to the competition - from television host John Oliver and rumours of Russian interference to controversial mammalian infiltration or their histories. "I mean, it's all fun and humorous, but there is that kind of serious undertone," she said. "More than 80 percent of our native birds are at risk or threatened with extinction, but at the end of the day, I hope that people read it and fall in love, and feel hopeful, because a lot of the stories are about people who are out there on the ground, making a difference." Ellen Rykers Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon Rykers added the three main things threatening our manu were predators, habitat loss and climate change. However, she said the Bird of the Year competition had become a fundraiser for Forest & Bird, particularly in 2023, when the pūteketeke, also known as the Australasian crested grebe, was named the Bird of the Century , after a campaign by Oliver. The competition raised more than $1.2 million . "Forest & Bird didn't really have any idea, ahead of time, exactly the scale of the campaign. We knew that it would be beyond anything that we'd ever seen before and we knew that there would be sort of international aspects, but we didn't realise that he'd be paying for billboards on the busiest intersection in Tokyo and on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. "That really propelled quite an unknown bird - an under the radar bird or an 'underbird' - into the spotlight." A shot from US comedian John Oliver's segment on New Zealand's Bird of the Year on 5 November 2023. Photo: Screengrab Rykers said it did not start out that way. "It didn't raise any money back in 2005, when it started, but it has become a way for people to express that love for birds, by supporting them financially, as well as with their vote." The competition had also grown considerably since then. "I think partly it's because we're a nation of birdlovers and we have named ourselves after one of our national birds, so it's really part of our identity as New Zealanders, but we also don't like to take ourselves too seriously, so there's that cheeky quality, I think, that really appeals. "Those two kind of things, I think, have really propelled Bird of the Year to become a fixture on our annual calendar." There had been scandals in the competition - even to the origin of Bird of the Year , which was when RNZ's Morning Report had suggested getting rid of the daily bird call. "This provoked such an outrage," Rykers said. "Michael Szabo, who was the communications manager at Forest & Bird at the time, took notice of this and he listened to all these people sending in messages about all the birds that they loved. "He had come across this concept of a Bird of the Year competition working in Europe... and he thought, 'Okay, this is a great opportunity to give this a go here in New Zealand'." Including the pekapeka-tou-roa - or the long-tailed bat - was another one. "There was a Forest & Bird staff member, Debs Martin, who had been campaigning quietly for its inclusion for a long time. "At the same time, a high school teacher, Peter Wills, he had the exact same idea. 'Why don't we put the pekapeka-tou-roa in Bird of the Year ?', and so he and his students, and a bat expert took on that campaign. "We only have a couple of native bat species, so there's never going to be a Bat of the Year , but they face many of the same threats that our native birds do." There had been voting scandals - in 2015, two teenage girls tried to rig the results in favour of the kōkako. In 2018, one person voted for the shag more than 3000 times, while in 2017, fake email accounts were created to bolster support for the white-faced heron. In 2020, about 1500 fraudulent votes were cast for the kiwi pukupuku, but Rykers said the first scandal actually happened in 2010. "Somehow, it infiltrated an online community of people really passionate about the kākāriki. "At the time, the Bird of the Year website was admittedly quite flimsy... and they just saw this huge explosion in votes that was someone manipulating the numbers. "They were quite nervous about admitting that and so they didn't actually say anything until the year after." Voting for the 2025 Bird of the Year competition will open on 15 September. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
