Canadian hikers claim to spot moose in South Island
It is the second such report in March after American visitors Norbert Nigon and Virginia Schuning said they saw one on the track two weeks earlier.
Annie-Pier Bourgeois, Antoine Beauchamp and Chanel Sabourin-Dubois were on their third day on the track, on March 29, on the final stretch before returning to the carpark when they came across a large animal near the bank of the Iris Burn River.
Mr Beauchamp said the noise they were making scared the animal into the bush, but they decided to cross the track and look for it.
"That's when we had a good look at him, and our very first instinct was to say, 'Oh my God, that's a moose.'
"But we didn't think you had those here, so we tried to rationalise it and think maybe, oh, maybe it's, I don't know, something else."
The trio, from Quebec, had seen moose in the wild at home.
It was not a deer, nor a caribou, which they might also see at home — and this animal was "very, very tall", he said.
It was a five-hour walk back to the carpark. When they arrived, they boarded a shuttle to bring them back to Te Anau and Mr Beauchamp said the driver "jokingly" asked if they had seen a moose.
"That's when we told her that yes, indeed, we saw a moose, and at first she didn't, like she thought we were getting in on the joke and everything but we didn't understand why it was something so interesting."
The driver asked a lot of questions.
"It's so funny, the moose thing here. I really didn't know it was a thing before hearing about it."
Moose from Canada were released in Fiordland in 1910 in the hopes of establishing a herd to hunt, but despite some occasional reports of a sighting, no official documentation exists, and Department of Conservation (Doc) Te Anau operations manager John Lucas said last month Doc believed they were most likely extinct in Fiordland.
Mr Beauchamp said he had not reported his sighting to Doc.
However, longtime New Zealand moose researcher Ken Tustin was buoyed by the second detailed account.
He said the Canadians' report coming so soon after the American report of a moose on March 13 was "an extraordinary coincidence".
He believed a remnant moose population existed today.
hamish.maclean@odt.co.nz
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NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
The legacy of Sir Michael Hill: Jeweller, violinist, philanthropist
And now he's gone, aged 86. Despite the green smoothies and the vigorous health regime, cancer sadly caught up with him in the end earlier this week. Hill's story is so familiar that most Kiwis from his era will know it: The shy, picked-on boy who hated school but found solace learning the violin at primary school and later at Whangārei Boys' High. He went on to build a multi-million business with 287 stores in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. He dreamed of becoming a professional violinist, practising up to eight hours a day after he dropped out of school. Hearing about a Herald violin competition, his parents agreed to support him if he won. Young Michael played a Haydn violin concerto, came fourth and that was the end of that. Young Michael Hill dreamed of playing the violin as a career. He was put to work as an apprentice watchmaker in his Uncle Arthur's Whangārei jewellery shop. Uncle Arthur thought his nephew was pretty 'useless' and eventually sent him out to the shop front instead, a move he might one day have lived to regret. The teenage Michael loved the retail side, the thrill of a sale. He might have stayed there forever – he endured it for 20 years – had it not been for a devastating house fire. By then Hill had met the love of his life, Christine Roe, a young arts teacher from Yorkshire. They met in November 1964 and married four months later. Sir Michael and Lady Christine Hill shared a love of art and music. Photo / Mark Hill They had two children, Mark and Emma, and slowly built their Claude Megson-designed dream home, inspired by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, on the Whangārei Heads. The family went to the movies one night and came home to find it ablaze. Rescuing the violin and the jewels Shocked at the sight, Hill rushed inside to rescue his 150-year-old violin and his wife's jewellery. Those rescued items were to dominate the rest of his life. Devastated by the smouldering – and uninsured – remains of his house, he vowed that things would change. When his uncle refused to sell him the business, he opened his own shop – Michael Hill Jeweller – five doors away in 1979. But this shop was nothing like Uncle Arthur's or any other jewellery shop at the time for that matter. Gone were the traditional clocks, china, crystal, trophies, china and silver. Michael Hill Jeweller would sell only jewellery and watches. The shop had a wide entrance and the goods were temptingly displayed in generous-sized glass counters. Michael and Christine Hill, with their children Mark and Emma, outside their first shop in Whangārei in 1979. He did a turnover of $400,000 in his first year; six years later the turnover had increased to $7 million with the help of six shops and 70 staff. Hill might have had a late start but the 'useless' jeweller was on his way. He wrote in his book Toughen Up, by which time he was a multi-millionaire, 'I took him [the uncle] at his own game ... and I won.' The school drop-out went on to build a global business which made him rich enough to own a Stradivarius violin, build a beautiful home near Arrowtown, and establish The Hills, an 18-hole championship golf course and a nine-hole course known as The Farm, built on a 200ha estate dotted with stunning sculptures. The Hills golf resort near Arrowtown showing the clubhouse and the 18th hole. He used to drive his Aston Martin very fast on the private road between his home and the golf club, just for the thrill of it. Hill named his first superyacht (34m) VvS1, a jewellery term for an almost flawless diamond. That was something he had learned in life, he said. 'Nothing is perfect, that's what keeps you striving for more.' Sir Michael Hill on board his super yacht VVSI in Auckland's Viaduct Harbour in 2015. Photo / Nick Reed Some wacky ideas Hill's ambition was limited only by his imagination and, by all accounts, he had plenty of it. Family friend Anne Rodda described him as 'an entrepreneur, a dreamer and a big thinker'. 'There was a lot to Michael. That fizzy brain, the one that's always coming up with ideas, some brilliant, some absolutely unattainable and wacky. One out of 10 of his ideas would be absolutely brilliant and we'd go with that.' Rodda, a trained classical cellist, met Hill 25 years ago in her role as artistic manager for the Auckland Philharmonia. She heard he wanted to organise a violin competition and she helped make it happen. Since then she's been the competition's executive director. Anne Rodda, the executive director of the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, pictured with Sir Michael in 2023. Photo / James Robertson The resulting Michael Hill International Violin Competition (the next one is in May 2026) is now recognised as one of the most important events in the cultural calendar. Sixteen competitors, selected from 160 applicants around the world, are flown to Queenstown to audition in front of seven international judges. The finalists then perform in front of a packed Auckland Town Hall audience and the judges. In 2023, 350,000 people watched the livestreamed finalists' performance, and the competition auditions attracted 1.3m views online. Hill was not just invested financially in the competition but on a deep personal level, Rodda says. 'He was sitting in the front row of every competition. He would bounce up in the interval full of enthusiasm, sure that the last one he heard play was going to win. He sat through all the auditions as the panel selected the competitors.' In his own way, Hill was helping talented young musicians achieve what he had been unable to do, have a career as a professional artist. 'It's an incredible story,' Rodda says. 'The competition is what was closest to his soul and the thing that gave him the most resonance and the most joy in his life.' Although he never played professionally, his love of the violin endured. In his 80s he still practised Bach on his 190-year-old Italian violin, kayaked on Lake Hayes and played golf. Sir Michael Hill practising Bach on his violin at home in / Mark Hill In a moving video tribute to their violin mentor, the 11 first-prize winners from the violin competitions contributed to a recording of Bach's Chaconne in D minor in his memory, each playing a different part of the movement. 'Michael Hill ... jeweller' But the wider public rarely saw the dedicated violinist who practised for hours. Instead. many will remember Hill from his excruciating TV ads that ran through the 80s. 'Hello,' he'd say in his best nasal tone, smiling at the camera, 'Michael Hill ... (pause) jeweller.' He'd purse his lips to emphasis the 'M'. The ads were irritating, to the point where DJs would mock and impersonate him. The jeweller even tried to teach his daughter Emma to impersonate him, but no one could quite pull it off. "Hello, Michael If anyone pointed out to him how awful his ads were, Hill would laugh. He was the first to admit they were 'unbelievably boring and amateurish' and that he looked 'terrible' in those early ads. But the point was, they worked. Everyone in New Zealand knew who Michael Hill was and what he sold. And they came to buy his jewellery. In 1987, Michael Hill International listed on the NZX, buoyed by steadily increasing sales and successful shop openings. Four months later the stock market crashed, a day that became known as Black Monday (October 19). Kiwis investors lost fortunes overnight and billions of dollars were wiped off the value of New Zealand shares. (The company had a less eventful listing on the ASX in 2016). It could have been the end of Michael Hill, jeweller, but no. Several smaller jewellery businesses didn't survive and Hill saw it as an opportunity to pick up new business when the economy recovered. That year he won the Air New Zealand enterprise award for business entrepreneurship and made it to the big smoke, opening his largest shop in Auckland's Queen St. And he started moving into the Australian market. Sir Michael Hill at the company's flagship Queen St store in Auckland. Photo / Brett Phibbs Not one to arrive quietly, a September 1989 newspaper clipping trumpets: 'Michael Hill's sale a riot.' And indeed it was. Hundreds of bargain hunters broke into a Canberra shopping mall at 4am, eager to get first dibs on $1 diamond rings, stock that Michael Hill International wanted to clear from a shop before displaying its own range. By the time the shop opened, 700 people were crowded outside and a woman punched a shop assistant when she was told she could only buy one ring. It took four carloads of police and the mall security guards to clear the crowd. Australians were also incensed to see a series of jewellery bargains scrolling in a TV ad, accompanied by the piercing sound of a bugle playing The Last Post. The ad caused pandemonium at the Michael Hill head office as complaints poured in, the Australian Ministry of Defence was enraged, there were bomb threats in Sydney and it made front-page news. But, as Sir Michael said at the time, 'sales went through the roof'. In his own way, he was a showman, full of ideas – often quirky - designed to make a splash. In 1988, he hired a woman, clad in a black sports bra, a striped bikini bottom and black tights to show off $450,000 worth of jewellery at the maiden annual shareholder meeting in Whangārei. Hill wasn't one for clustering his shareholders into boring meeting rooms. Instead, he'd take them for a joyride on the Waitematā Harbour, entertained by a jazz band; or a cruise to a vineyard on Waiheke Island, or to Pakatoa Island, or to the Ellerslie Racecourse. Sir Michael Hill entertained his shareholders with a jazz band on the Quickcat catamaran in 1989, with his accountant John Ryer (left) and joint managing director Howard Bretherion (right). One time his shareholders met in an aircraft hangar in Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat). At each AGM they were usually told the joyous news that the company could expect another tax-paid profit, and that new shops were about to be added to the fast-growing chain. For the company's 10th AGM in 1997, 250 shareholders were loaded onto a train in Auckland bound for Waimauku. Hill, nattily dressed in pinstriped pants and sporting a red tie decorated with yellow worms, served bubbly and wine on the journey to his faithful followers. Again the news was good: a plan to open 100 stores and move to other countries as the market became saturated. Former Herald writer Bernadette Rae was on the train that day. As she put it: 'So many fingers to ring, so many necks to chain.' In the early 1990s, everything Michael-Hill-jeweller touched seemed to turn to gold. (He famously sold his wife's engagement rings four times after they were admired, each time replacing it with a bigger stone). Sir Michael and Lady Christine Hill at the opening of their revamped Whangārei store in 2013. Sir Michael famously sold his wife's engagement ring four times. Then came the stumble of the shoe era. He bought the assets from a Christchurch shoe company and by 1992 had added nine shoe shops to his 41 jewellery stores. The trouble was they not only didn't make money, they lost money, a lot. By 1994 all nine shoe stores had closed and 'Michael Hill ... cobbler' was no more. He later acknowledged that the foray into shoes was a 'disaster' and that the company needed to stick to jewellery and watches. Undeterred by the footwear trip-up, the group continued to expand. Well on his way to saturating the Australian market, Hill based his family in Queensland's Sanctuary Cove in the mid 1990s, with his launch Rough Diamond parked at the back door. 'A wimpy thing to do' He couldn't understand why more people didn't want to get into retail. By 2009, he had 250 stores in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, opening new stores so fast he couldn't find enough staff to fill them. He was puzzled why Kiwis were willing to work in hospitality but thought a male working in a jewellery shop was a 'wimpy, poncy thing to do'. So he wrote Toughen Up (the proceeds of which went to Cure Kids) as a recruitment tool. He told me during an interview that his CEO earned three, possibly four, times more than the (then) Prime Minister John Key. Don't ever suggest working in a shop is a dead-end career, he said. By then he had invested in Joe's Garage in Arrowtown and had no shortage of applicants wanting to work in the cafe, but he was struggling to find good people to join his jewellery empire. Take his group diamond buyer at the time, Galina Hirtzel, he said, a girl from Invercargill who stated on $10 an hour. She was now (in 2009) flying round the world spending $100m of the company's money on diamonds every year. He thought her hippy long hair and floaty dress tricked merchants into not realising she was a tough negotiator. Knighted in 2011 for services to business and the arts, Hill was exhilarated by the company's growth and didn't mind talking it up, describing himself on one interview as 'the Ferrari of the jewellery business'. He was a businessman in the quick lane overtaking the rest of the jewellery world. At the same time he told business journalists he wanted 'controlled, sensible growth'. He and Lady Christine built a home on land that used to be a deer farm. Locals nicknamed it 'Hillbrook' and some took exception to the building, complaining it was too 'pink'. That caused the council to request a colour change; the Hills held firm. The 'terracotta' house later won the South Regional Architectural Award (for its colour scheme), a victory that used to make Hill chuckle. The Hills are a close family. Children Emma and Mark, and the four grandchildren, all live on the estate, with sculptures by Mark Hill among other artworks strategically placed through The Hills. Sculptor Mark Hill with his sculpture "Emergence", made from hand-forged corten steel, at The Hills Golf Club. He preferred to be low key and with the family when he was on holiday, often escaping Otago's winter to cruise in the Pacific on The Beast, his 40m adventure catamaran. In the summer The Beast's captain, Andy Grocott, who has worked for 'the boss' since 2006, would sail to remote places in New Zealand's Far North so the Hills could fish, swim, hike, dive and kayak. Jetskis were not their style. Sir Michael Hill and family preferred to explore remote places on The Beast. Photo / Michael Craig As tributes poured in this week, members of The Hills golf club penned their own. 'Rest peacefully Sir Michael,' it said at the end. 'You will forever be part of The Hills.' Beneath is one of the many cartoons he drew for his own and others' amusement. It shows an aviator clinging to a rocket as it zooms into space. Underneath Hill has signed off with the quote, 'Live every day as if it was going to be your last, for one day you're sure to be right.' Jane Phare is the New Zealand Herald's deputy print editor. Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
The Spinoff
2 days ago
- The Spinoff
Why I don't eat fish
Ruth Shaw is the acclaimed author of Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World, as well as a sailor – in this essay she explains how and why she made the decision to stop eating fish. The last question I was asked during my session at the Auckland Writers Festival in May was 'What is one thing we can do to help the environment?' My answer? 'Stop eating fish.' This is easy for me to say as I have been a vegetarian for over 40 years, although I admit that while sailing the east coast of Australia, I was still catching the occasional fish to eat — and to give my shipmate, a cat named Hoffy, a fish head to chew on. Rachel Carson wrote two books that left a lasting impression on me: Silent Spring, published in 1962, and The Sea Around Us, published in 1951. Both books were controversial bestsellers that revolutionised how we thought about our environment and, more importantly, made me aware of what I was eating. In 1999 I read Cod by Mark Kurlansky. This small book about the history of cod fishing (cod was one of the most profitable and soughtt-after fish for centuries and was pushed to near extinction) would become a bestseller. Two of the cornerstones of my life have been books and the protection of our environment. When my husband Lance and I purchased our vessel Breaksea Girl and started running multi-day trips on the Fiordland coast, and down as far as the subantarctic islands, we both agreed that one of the most important decisions we could make was to have a 'no fishing' policy on board. Bill Ballantine, director of the University of Auckland's marine laboratory at Goat Island, is recognised as the founder of marine reserves in New Zealand. He established the first marine reserve at Goat Island in 1975, which was opened to the public in 1977. For Bill, the answer to protecting our underwater environment was to establish 'no take areas with full protection'. The opposition to his idea was staggering. Thankfully we now have 44 marine reserves along the coastline of Aotearoa. Before being employed by the Department of Conservation, Lance was a commercial fisherman. It was there he witnessed the decline of fish such as groper, blue cod and crayfish inside the fiords. After diving at Goat Island and seeing how the area had recovered, he too realised that the way to protect our underwater environment was through the establishment of marine reserves. In 1995 the Guardians of Fiordland Fisheries was established, later known as the Fiordland Marine Guardians. They were formerly established as an advisory group under the Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) Marine Management Act 2005. This legislation also created eight new marine reserves and other protected areas throughout Fiordland known as 'china shops' because of their delicate nature. Through their commitment to manage and protect the marine environment, the Fiordland crayfishing industry is now one of the healthiest and most sustainable in our country. But how does this lead to me stating publicly that we should stop eating fish? In the 1970s, when the commercial fishing of orange roughy started, it was believed that they only lived for 30 to 40 years. By the mid-1990s marine scientists estimated that they lived between 125 and 250 years, the longest-lived commercial fish species. They don't breed until they are between 20 and 40 years of age and, even then, not every year. By the end of the 1990s, three of the eight New Zealand orange roughy fisheries had collapsed and were closed. I was astounded. We were led to believe that it was a sustainable fishery practice, when in fact it was based on incomplete scientific information. That was when I made the decision to stop eating fish. We talk about sustainable fishing, but the orange roughy and the Atlantic northwest cod are just two examples of commercial fishing that were not sustainable. We are also faced with a decline in penguin colonies. One of the reasons they are struggling is that they no longer have access to enough food to rear their young, due to the demand of commercial fishing fleets. Combine this lack of food with loss of habitat, pollution, disease and climate change, and we can see why many of the world's penguin species are endangered, including our own yellow-eyed penguin which is considered the world's rarest. A third of the world's studied fisheries are currently pushed beyond their biological limits, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. We have been fighting to SAVE THE WHALES, but what about SAVE THE KRILL? Without krill, which is being heavily overfished, a number of seabirds, whales, fish, penguins and albatross would starve. Millions of krill are scooped up from the Southern Ocean to be made into pet food, food for fish farms and health supplements. My stand not to eat fish is based on solid ground, and there is more than enough evidence to prove that we need to look after our oceans. Read Colin Butfield and David Attenborough's latest book, Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness. Like so many of the books on our oceans, the reading is harsh and confronting. I am not saying that everyone should stop eating fish. Take, for example, communities who rely only on fish for their protein. Generally they have, or did have, low impact, traditional fishing techniques. What I would like to encourage is for more people to consider the health of our oceans which have over 80% of the world's biodiversity. Having dived in Fiordland, I have seen a world which is full of beauty, colour and life forms that could be out of a science fiction book. I have seen the stunning colour of inquisitive blue cod, witnessed the cheeky behaviour of girdled wrasse, and watched in wonder as dolphins and seals interacted with us. I want my grandchildren to witness the magic of our undersea world, and the only way I can do that is to help protect it by not eating fish. I know I have made the right decision for me.
Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Deer not forgotten, Doc says
Animal welfare considerations are taken seriously during predator control operations, the Department of Conservation says. Doc and Zero Invasive Predators (Zip) are part way through an aerial 1080 operation aiming to kill the wild cats endangering the southern dotterel on Stewart Island/Rakiura. It is expected that rats and possums will eat the bait and cats will feed on their carcasses. During the first phase of the operation early last month, three dead white-tailed deer were found with the remains of 1080 pellets in their stomachs in a hunting block where pellets with added deer repellant were laid. Last weekend, New Zealand Game Animal Council chief executive Corina Jordan said the use of 1080 poison where white-tailed deer lived could severely reduce the numbers of the "iconic" game animal. It was also an inhumane way to kill the deer, she said. Doc national programmes director Ben Reddiex said the department took animal welfare considerations seriously during its predator control operations. "We only use legal control methods that have been evaluated as acceptably humane by an animal ethics committee." White-tailed deer were not a target species for the Predator Free Rakiura Project. "However, it is acknowledged that some deer may die as part of the predator control operations on Rakiura." Staff were monitoring the results of the 1080 drop to understand the impacts on a variety of species, including the white-tailed deer. At present Doc had no deer management operations planned for the island. "There are no plans to eradicate white-tailed deer on Rakiura." Deer were introduced to the island, and in large numbers could affect the ecosystem by eating native vegetation. "However, Doc recognises that hunting white-tailed deer in Rakiura is valued for food, business, and recreation purposes." Hunting can still continue during the operation, he said. Doc and Zip were talking with the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association, the Game Animal Council and experienced hunters to address concerns. All were working to ensure there were as few disruptions as possible to hunting opportunities and the white-tailed deer population while aiming for a predator-free island, he said. The future use of deer repellant was also part of the discussion. Hunting and Fishing Minister James Meager said he supported the effort to eradicate predators threatening native species. "At the same time, I recognise the cultural, recreational, and economic value of white-tailed deer hunting on Stewart Island. "While deer are not targeted by predator control operations, I acknowledge concerns about incidental losses from 1080. If every rat, cat, possum and hedgehog on the island was killed using every reasonable tool available, there would not be any need for 1080, he said.
