It was very informative to learn in a local newspaper that the commissioner had made her considered decision allowing the Whangarei District Council a 20 year legal right to dig up part of the Matapouri estuary and move it to the main beach.
Many people with an interest in this small coastal community seem to have had a say in the reported decision. There were 17 submissions against engineering the further disruption of nature and 8 seeking the right to battle nature, apparently on behalf of our amenity values and some private property.
The following eight photos of white faced heron, oyster catcher, Caspian tern, red billed gull, dotterel plus two tourists and three pou whenua, were taken during a walk around the “spit” at Matapouri on October 31 this year.
According to the metadata imbedded in each image, the last photo was taken 26 minutes and 19 seconds after the first: A brief but busy afternoon at the beach.
Will we ever know what consideration the commissioner gave these birds in her decision, or if she knew how much they used this space on sunny October afternoons and probably had done so for millennia?
