Firefighters Union frustrated after having to call up truck from Hamilton
The New Zealand firefighter's union are saying the major blaze in Auckland's CBD should be a wake-up call for Fire and Emergency after they had to call up an aerial truck from Hamilton to fight the blaze.
The truck down south had to be put back together hurriedly as
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The Spinoff
3 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Why Homo sapiens are Auckland Zoo's priority species
Auckland Zoo is involved in dozens of conservation projects, but one species is paramount – us. Naomii Seah visits the Zoo to find out why. On a mild winter's night, by the light of the full moon, a group of Auckland Zoo staff and mana whenua pick their way carefully through the thick native bush. Beneath their boots, the damp undergrowth gives off a rich, earthy aroma of rotting bark and leaf litter. Spying a marker tied to an ancient pōhutakawa, a member of the group pauses, and gingerly holds a clear container to the craggy bark. From it a brown, unassuming insect peeks out then scurries onto the trunk. It's about an inch long. While it's hard to imagine, this young wētāpunga will one day be as big as a mouse. These expeditions have been running for over a decade across eight pest-free islands in the Hauraki Gulf and Bay of Islands as part of Auckland Zoo's wētāpunga breed-and-release programme. It's just one of the Zoo's many conservation initiatives. As the Zoo sees it though, the most important creatures on this trip aren't just the hundreds of tiny wētāpunga about to be released – it's the people. Kevin Buley is the director of Auckland Zoo. 'The fundamental purpose of the Zoo is to reconnect people with the environment, with wildlife and with themselves – what it means to be human, and part of the environment, not apart from it,' he says. Since 2018, Kevin has led the Zoo through huge changes, both physically and philosophically, driven in part by the impacts of the pandemic. 'Covid was like the moment the scales dropped from our eyes, and we saw how the Zoo could fundamentally improve the wellbeing of people that visited us.' Dozens, if not hundreds of papers have now shown a connection between time spent in nature and improved wellbeing. But with increasing urbanisation – over 80% of New Zealanders now live in urban areas – the disconnect between communities and te taiao (the natural world) is only growing. As an organisation, the Zoo sees itself as a vital conduit between Auckland communities and the environment. This realisation, Kevin says, necessitated a significant change to the kaupapa of the Zoo. Namely, the Zoo wanted to reposition itself as distinctively of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and strengthen its relationship with Te Ao Māori. The Zoo has been working alongside iwi Māori to weave indigenous concepts through the zoo experience and into its wider programming. Incorporating Te Ao Māori is one way the Zoo hopes to continue building a more holistic approach to wildlife conservation. This holistic approach speaks to what Kevin sees as the ultimate purpose of a zoo – to help build a future where the classic 'just-in-time' sticking-plaster approach to conservation work is no longer required. What would that future look like though? As Kevin sees it, it's a future where we have successfully renegotiated our relationship with the natural environment and are living sustainably as part of it. It's a future where we no longer have to fight an endless battle against biodiversity loss and species extinction. Think, he says, of communities, corporates and governments all putting the health of te taiao first in their decision-making. 'If our ultimate goal is to help people tune back into nature, to have humans as a species living at one with the planet, then first we've got to support people's wellbeing. We can't ask people to recycle, to use sustainable palm oil, to eat sustainable fish if their day-to-day wellbeing is not in a great place,' says Kevin. The evolving role of zoos is something Dr. Sarah Thomas, head of conservation advocacy and engagement at Auckland Zoo, spends a lot of time thinking about. 'How do we change how we think about being a zoo to being a community-serving cultural organisation? Raising up and giving equal credit to the way we serve our communities is just as important as our conservation fieldwork.' Post-Covid, Sarah noticed how alienated communities felt from each other and the environment. In many ways, she says, we are still dealing with the impacts of Covid's social isolation and economic fallout. In this atmosphere, Sarah and the Zoo recognised the need to walk alongside the community. The team started a programme which gifted thousands of tickets to community groups. This removed the financial barrier and opened the Zoo up to them as a place for repair, recovery and respite. 'The passion that I have is [trying to understand] how we can serve our communities to feel good and function well, so we have a society that's thriving here in Aotearoa,' Sarah says. 'We know that there's a lot of lonely people in Auckland. All the stats are there to say people are struggling, whether that's post-Covid or just in the current environmental, societal state. So, for me, having the Zoo as te pā hono – a place of connection, is like a beacon of hope.' By looking after wellbeing, and addressing community needs, the team hopes to enable a greater, long-term change in how we take care of ourselves and our environment. Part of that means being an accessible gateway to wildlife and te taiao. Many people may never visit the African savannah, the Southeast Asian rainforest or even Auckland's predator-free offshore islands. But that shouldn't preclude communities from feeling connections to those places. In Te Ao Māori, the wētāpunga is known as the god of ugly things. It's a reputation that's contributed to the wētāpunga being maligned and overlooked. Just over a decade ago, the last remaining population was isolated to Te Hauturu-o-Toi (Little Barrier Island). Now though, through Auckland Zoo's programme, which was built on previous work by DOC and Butterfly Creek, wētāpunga populations have been established on eight additional islands. It's been so successful that Richard Gibson, Auckland Zoo's head of animal care and conservation, says the programme will wrap up soon. 'We're going to be ending the wētāpunga programme very soon because we've done it. We've transformed that animal's risk of extinction.' It's feat that's extremely rare in conservation circles, where efforts can go on for decades just to conserve a few precious individuals. But for Richard and the rest of the team at the Zoo, this remarkable success is only the beginning. 'What we've done for the wētāpunga is given them a fighting chance for the next 100 to 200 years, but that's nothing in evolutionary terms.' It's a hard reality that all conservationists must grapple with. Human intervention at the brink of extinction can only do so much. So how do we build a future where endangered species can reestablish themselves and truly thrive? 'One could argue that the true value of the wētāpunga breed and release programme is in its advocacy, education and awareness role,' says Richard. 'It doesn't matter how hard we try to save a species or a group of species, we're only able to do it in a very short timeframe. Their long-term persistence relies on us changing our relationship with the planet.' Currently, the world is grappling with its sixth mass extinction. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the current species extinction rate is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than natural rates due to the impacts of human activity. Dozens of species are going extinct every day, and up to 50 percent of all species face extinction by 2050. In the face of this challenge, nothing less than a radical paradigm shift will make a real difference. Regardless, the ripple effects of the wētāpunga programme have been far reaching. Over the past decade, it has attracted media coverage from both national and international outlets like Al Jazeera. This coverage has helped raise the profile of the wētāpunga. Breed-and-release expeditions, meanwhile, have directly engaged the wider community, from children to iwi groups and volunteers. These missions have generated new appreciation for the wētāpunga and inspired future invertebrate champions. Long after these Zoo bred wētāpunga die and become part of the forest floor themselves, these messages will continue to resonate, says Richard. 'Auckland Zoo is all about conservation, yes, but we see Homo sapiens – our staff, visitors, volunteers and wider communities – as vital to the present and future health of this planet.' Kevin agrees and says: 'We sometimes hear people say that in a perfect world we wouldn't need zoos. But I disagree. In order for there to be a perfect world, we need good zoos that continue to nurture and support that human connection to nature, to wildlife and to each other.'
Scoop
4 hours ago
- Scoop
Is There Freedom From Man's Dark Current, If Only Temporarily?
Two dogs play with abandon in the water upstream. Light-coated Labradors, they have the look and manner of canines without masters, doing exactly as they please. At one point the larger of the two looks like he's going to gallop downstream to where I'm sitting, but he turns around, and they vanish. The mirror of nature begins to dissolve the accretions within, and I forget about the dogs. Just then I hear them bound down the steep bank behind me, running headlong directly toward me. Instinctively, I shout three times in quick succession: 'Go on!' They turn on their paws and bounce back up the bank without protest or fear. A moment later I realize they were just being friendly. Perhaps they thought I was a kindred park animal, as free as they are. As I resume my meditation, the dogs' joie de vivre remains with me, along with their sense of complete freedom. Then, as one's concerns and conditioning melt away in undirected attention to everything without and within, a feeling of peace, joy, and freedom comes over me. I realize that the dogs have shown me something about freedom. But it raises more questions than answers. Why are we humans not free? Clearly, peace, joy and freedom go together. Why are they increasingly rare in this world? Indeed, why do people resign to the situation? We're not dogs that need to be released from our masters. For many people who don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, we enslave ourselves with what we call our 'responsibilities.' Later on during my walk I come across the makeshift bed of some homeless wretch, tucked under a small grove of bay trees. A tattered pair of pants is slung over one of the branches, and the place has the look of habitation for at least a few nights. Ever since I was a teenager, I've investigated the question of whether something besides random chance on one hand, and ridiculous beliefs on the other, is going on in the evolution of 'higher thought. Given how dark man's consciousness has become, it appears there is no cosmic intelligence operating on the mind/brain of man. Is there just the possibility of temporary negation and freedom in a few fortunate individuals? Or is that only true at this point in human history? I'm only sure that there are two streams of consciousness. There isn't a duality between them, because the negation of the former is what allows the latter to emerge. The first, darkness and enslavement to conditioning and propaganda, is the overwhelming reality; the second, negation and freedom, remains a rare and fleeting potentiality. It's in the nature of the consciousness we know, based on thought and mediated by memory, to be in shadow. And the movement of darkness has become synonymous with consciousness as we usually know it. The more pernicious form of darkness, which is as old as man but more pervasive now than it's ever been in human history, includes the intentionality of man-made evil, with its death-wish of the complete deadening of the human spirit. Intense passive watchfulness ignites the movement of negation, which is the remedy to perpetually living in the darkness of content-consciousness. For the individual, the movement of negation is the antidote of the collective and individual accretion of content-consciousness. But what relevance does the meditative state, which flows from the spontaneous movement of negation in attention, have for human consciousness as a whole? After all, the temporary quieting and freedom from thought is not liberation from the dark current of man's destiny, even for the individual. What's more, as the few illumined human beings in history attest, one individual's liberation does not set man free, even though humankind's freedom cannot occur without individual liberation. Is intelligence growing in collective consciousness at present, or only the movement of darkness? There may be a flowering of insight in a few individuals, but there is no discernible effect on human consciousness as a whole at this point. Even so, cosmic intelligence, being inseparable from the energy, matter and evolution of the universe, can only operate through the awakening of insight in the human being. Martin LeFevre - Meditations Scoop Contributor Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher. His sui generis 'Meditations' explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity. lefevremartin77@gmail
Otago Daily Times
5 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Firefighters to get new pump after water pressure issues discovered
Canterbury's dry, hot summers put it at risk of fires. Photo: RNZ / Nathan Mckinnon / File image Firefighters in the Canterbury town of Culverden will finally get a new water pump, more than a year after water pressure issues were discovered during testing. The water pump was found to be non-compliant during a flow test by Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) in April 2024. During the FENZ test, water pressure exceeded the protection settings which forced the system to shutdown, cutting off the township's water supply for around 20 minutes. The protection system has since been reconfigured to make it less sensitive, but the installed pumps couldn't meet the flow rates required under the FENZ code of practice. The Hurunui District Council voted to upgrade the town's water treatment plant at a meeting on Tuesday [June 17], at a cost of up to $78,000. Council three waters field operations manager Alex Makogon said Culverden's water supply was reconfigured two years ago as part of a protozoa compliance upgrade. ''Culverden experiences highly variable water consumption, making pump selection challenging.'' A low density pipe protection system was installed to prevent damage, making it quite sensitive to pressure, he said. Council chief operations officer Dan Harris said while there was no legal requirement to comply with FENZ's code of practice, completing the upgrade will provide more resilience in an emergency. ''Our own requirement is that we will do what is reasonably practical to meet the code of practice.'' A district-wide compliance report was commissioned, and confirmed the majority of other schemes in the district are compliant, he said. The council will complete pump upgrades, install a new generator, replace variable speed drives and upgrade the treatment plant's power supply. As part of the upgrade, the council plans to repurpose the equipment. By David Hill, Local Democracy Reporter ■ LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
