Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

A convoy of recreational fishers have made their way across the Auckland Harbour Bridge as they to Auckland CBD for a rally on Saturday morning.

The One Ocean protest, co-organised by fishing enthusiast Ben Chissell, targets aspects of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Act and other proposed fishing reforms.

The law, which came into effect in October, created a group of new marine protected zones while also allowing exclusive use of two highly protected areas by commercial ring-net fishing operators.

Chissell earlier said the protest was not against commercial fishing but his position was that if the Hauraki Gulf was so badly depleted that areas needed to be shut off, then no-one should fish them.

He said protesters would come from all over to join the convoy on its 30km journey from the Albany Park n Ride departing at 8.30am.

“We’ve got people coming from Kaitaia, Ahipara, Tauranga, Whitianga, Waikato, all over the show. We’ve got guys putting their boats on trailers, getting on the ferry from Waiheke and Great Barrier and coming over.

“So it’s going to be a lot bigger than I guess even when we initially hoped.”

A New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) spokesperson earlier said the convoy would be using the Oteha Valley Rd on-ramp and State Highway 16 Port off-ramp, when travelling to and from SH1.

“This could lead to congestion in those areas and may mean the Park ‘n’ Ride is busier than usual.

“NZTA and AT (Auckland Transport) will be closely monitoring the impact on the city’s network through our joint Auckland Traffic Operations Centre and will notify the public of any significant disruption through our usual channels, including the AT Mobile app and NZTA website Journey Planner.”

Despite concerns of traffic congestion, by 10am, the hundreds of people driving in part of the convoy had mostly passed over the Harboru Bridge with minimal disruption.

There was a police presence at the Albany Park ‘n’ Ride and police escorted the protest along the route while parking wardens were in place to manage the roll out, according to protest information.

There should be no “boat riding”, organisers said and banners and flags must be secured.

“This is a peaceful protest, and our goal is a safe and successful event. Please use common sense, look out for one another, and remember, we’re all in this together,” the One Ocean website said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The teenager who died in a crash on a Far North Beach a week ago has been named as Samuel James Herdman.

Police released the boy’s name on Saturday morning.

A spokesperson said the crash involving a 4WD on Tokerau Beach, on the Karikari Peninsula, was reported to police just before 7.30pm on 14 November.

Fire and Emergency NZ said at the time crews had to work to free one person from the wreck.

Sam, 17, of Pukenui, died at the scene.

The Houhora Big Game and Sports Fishing Club posted a heartfelt tribute to Sam on Facebook three days later.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of valued club member and local, Samuel Herdman,” the post read.

“Sam was an avid hunter gatherer, with fishing running through his veins. He landed some impressive fish through the weigh station over the years, such as a 131.2kg striped marlin when he was just 12 1/2 years-old.

“Sam, your enthusiasm for the sport will inspire many future generations of young anglers, for many years to come.”

A funeral notice on behalf of the Herdman and Gbric families said Sam was the loved son of Jason and Sharlene and treasured older brother of Isabella.

The family acknowledged the first responders and the Watson family for their care on the beach that day.

Two other people who were injured in the crash were taken to hospital in what was at the time understood to be critical and moderate conditions.

One was airlifted to Starship Hospital in Auckland, and the other transported to Kaitaia Hospital.

Both had now been discharged from hospital, the spokesperson said.

“Police extend our sympathies to Samuel’s friends and loved ones for their loss.”

Through the police Sam’s family had asked for privacy as they grieved his death.

Police were now conducting enquiries on behalf of the Coroner.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Thousands and thousands of kiwifruit pass between the gloved fingers of research technologist Megan Wood, and she reaches for them just as a consumer might.

“Essentially, I just feel them, and I think I would eat that one.

“We’ve been doing it for years, so my best guess is usually pretty good.”

She’s a dab hand at analysing the fruit inside and out, working in the sensory lab at the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre (KBC) in Te Puke where the focus is on developing the kiwifruit of the future.

But that first gut feel is followed by a thorough analysis of every bit of the fruit, followed by taste tests and off-site examinations for nutritional benefits.

A kiwifruit may have too big a knobbly bit on its bottom – “We have had people in the past crack a tooth on it”; and cavities – “If the cavity is too big, too many critters will live in there, and we can’t export it.”

Then there are other features like shape, colour and sugar levels to grade and record.

Established in 2021, the KBC’s Te Puke site is the headquarters for growing and testing new kiwifruit cultivars.

Kiwifruit is New Zealand’s largest horticultural export, worth $3.9 billion in the year ended June 2025, following 2024’s record crop.

KBC – which also has trial orchards in Kerikeri, Motueka, Gisborne and Italy – is a joint venture between Zespri and Plant and Food Research, now part of the Bioeconomy Science Institute.

It’s led by chief executive Matt Glenn.

“We’re sort of the grease in the wheels between the researchers in the laboratory and Zespri, who are the commercialisation partner, and that’s really why we set up the joint venture as well, because we can focus really on deploying the technology, implementing it, and then driving it through to a commercial outcome.”

And that process is a lengthy one – it can take up to 25 years from the initial idea to actual fruit on the shelf.

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Glenn said they start with a “concept” requested by Zespri and from there develop “elite parents” from raw germplasm originating in Sichuan, China, a process which takes four or five years.

It takes another five years for seedlings to grow and produce the required fruit at KBC’s orchards around the country.

“Out of those 30 or 40,000 that we plant as seedlings every year, there’s probably about two or 300 that go into the next stage, which is the clonal commercial testing.”

That can take another five years.

“After 15 years, we might go back to Zespri and say, ‘hey, do you remember 15 years ago you said you’d like a kiwifruit that look like this? Well, we think here are some candidates’, and we present them to the Zespri board, and they go … ‘they look pretty good, we think we’d like to have a bet on those’, because it’s quite a big bet they’re making at that stage.”

They then put them into the hands of the growers and grow them at hectare scale, before getting the fruit to market and saying “yeah, that’s a winner, we’re going to commercialise it”.

The Te Puke headquarters has 40 hectares of trial orchards as well as laboratories and a cool store which tests the harvested fruit’s resilience at the handling and storage stage.

Breeding for a future climate

Aside from improvements to existing varieties, KBC is also developing cultivars which will be able to cope with the changing climate, and its 30ha orchard in Kerikeri in Northland is an important testing ground, Glenn told Country Life.

“The modelling that we’re seeing is telling us that the climate in the Bay of Plenty, where 80 percent of kiwifruit are grown, will be like Northland by about 2050, 2060.

“We have put [the cultivars] under that pressure, that evolutionary pressure, effectively of warmer, wetter temperatures than we get down here in the Bay … so by the time the Bay looks like that we know that we will have cultivars that will work successfully down here.”

Increasing intense weather events are also considered in the breeding programme, with a trial orchard in Italy which is breeding new root stocks to deal with very wet heavy soils.

“At the same time, we’re going to have areas, that are going to have soils that are salinating, or soils that are very dry, so we’ve actually got to be looking at every extreme in just about everything that we do.”

Glenn said successful fruit pass tests in three different areas – they have all the things a consumer wants, good yield and resilience for the grower and are supply chain ready.

“We’ve got to make sure that the fruit don’t have spikes on them that so they [don’t] puncture other fruit as they go through the process, got to make sure that they’re really hardy, so you can pick them while they’re quite firm, but then they’ll go through the supply chain really well.

“If any one of those three things is missing, the likelihood is that the fruit won’t be successful.”

Glenn said they were also working on developing a green kiwifruit “that may not need some of the chemical inputs that the farmers use traditionally”.

Speeding up the process

Artificial intelligence and precision breeding, also known as gene editing, could help speed up the lengthy process, Glenn said.

AI will help in decision-making with the large amount of data they collect but “you’ve still got to ground truth all the things that you do, so you’ve got to put seeds in the ground and grow them, and look at the fruit, and look at multiple fruit, and see if that’s really going to be sustainable”.

“What we’re particularly interested in is the precision breeding. Some people call it gene editing, but we call it precision breeding, where you’re making really small base pair level changes.

“You’re not introducing any DNA, and you might be just up-regulating or down-regulating particular genes within the genome, so what you’re doing is you’re maximising the potential of the genetics that are already in the plant.”

But he said they can’t use the technology, being used in contained greenhouses and labs at the moment, until there’s a change in legislation.

“We just think we need to be a bit more sophisticated than we’ve been over the last 30 years of having a really blunt legal instrument to deal with new technologies that are going to really help us advance the industry.”

Learn more:

• Find out more about the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre here

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A convoy of recreational fishers is expected to delay traffic as it makes its way across the Auckland Harbour Bridge, along Tamaki Drive and onto Mission Bay on Saturday morning.

The One Ocean protest, co-organised by fishing enthusiast Ben Chissell, targets aspects of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Act and other proposed fishing reforms.

The law, which came into effect in October, created a group of new marine protected zones while also allowing exclusive use of two highly protected areas by commercial ring-net fishing operators.

Chissell earlier said the protest was not against commercial fishing but his position was that if the Hauraki Gulf was so badly depleted that areas needed to be shut off, then no-one should fish them.

He said protesters would come from all over to join the convoy on its 30km journey from the Albany Park n Ride departing at 8.30am.

“We’ve got people coming from Kaitaia, Ahipara, Tauranga, Whitianga, Waikato, all over the show. We’ve got guys putting their boats on trailers, getting on the ferry from Waiheke and Great Barrier and coming over.

“So it’s going to be a lot bigger than I guess even when we initially hoped.”

A spokesperson for the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) told the NZ Herald the protest could cause congestion across the city.

The convoy would enter State Highway 1 via the Oteha Valley Road on-ramp and head toward the Port via SH16 and then to Kohimarama Road via Tamaki Drive.

There would be a police presence at the Albany Park ‘n’ Ride and police would escort the protest along the route while parking wardens were in place to manage the roll out, according to protest information.

There should be no “boat riding”, organisers said and banners and flags must be secured.

“This is a peaceful protest, and our goal is a safe and successful event. Please use common sense, look out for one another, and remember, we’re all in this together,” the One Ocean website said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Explainer – Rolling up to some of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions will soon become a little more expensive, as parking fees begin at some of Aotearoa’s hot spots in December.

It’s starting as a trial run at three popular Department of Conservation (DOC) sites but if it’s successful it could expand further.

Here’s what you’ll pay and where it will take effect.

Where are parking fees being launched?

Parking fees are set to begin at Aoraki/Mount Cook, Punakaiki/Pancake Rocks and Franz Josef/Wairau in December.

It’s a pilot programme expected to last until June 2026.

“We expect a final date to be announced at the end of the month (November) following the install and testing on paid parking equipment,” Department of Conservation director of heritage and visitors Catherine Wilson said.

How much will parking cost?

Parking will be $5 per hour.

The first 20 minutes will be free to allow for drop-offs and pick-ups or people staying for a brief time.

For Aoraki Mt Cook there will be a daily rate of $25 per day, while at Franz Josef and Punakaiki there will be a daily rate of $20.

Commercial tourism operators who hold a valid concession will be granted a parking fee exemption during the pilot.

Will even locals have to pay to park?

Yes, but local district residents can get a reduced lower-cost annual pass.

There will be annual passes for locals – $10 per year per vehicle – which allows for unlimited access. For Franz Jozef and Punakaiki, Buller, Grey and Westland districts residents will be eligible, while for Aoraki Mt Cook it’s those living within the Mackenzie District.

Regular visitors to the regions who aren’t residents of those districts can also get an annual pass for $60 a year.

Wilson said free parking for locals was one of the options considered, but, “In the end, the cost of the local permit is set low to acknowledge the special relationship residents have with their whenua.”

The parking strategy was adopted after considering information from stakeholders, public submissions, market research and evaluating more than 40 car parks around the world, including 16 in New Zealand.

“The market research helped us understand typical rates and fee structures for paid parking at similar sites, and one finding was that the average hourly charge for car parking internationally is NZ$6.40 per hour,” DOC said in its analysis.

The group Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) consulted on the proposal.

“TIA supports user charges where they directly contribute to maintaining and improving infrastructure, but only when they are fair and enhance the visitor experience,” its chief executive Rebecca Ingram said.

Ingram said the TIA would “welcome the introduction of low-cost annual passes for New Zealand residents, which ensures Kiwis can continue to access public conservation spaces affordably”.

While the fees may surprise some, they aren’t the first parking fees for popular attractions. Milford Sound has charged $10 an hour for some of its parking lots since 2019, operated by Milford Sound Tourism.

What happens if you don’t pay?

There won’t be any towing or wheel clamps used, according to DOC’s engagement report.

Cameras will record the entry and exit of vehicles and their registration information.

Parking fees will be enforced by outside company Stellar Projects, who are installing the paid parking hardware.

But considering many tourists will be from overseas, how exactly will breach notices be enforced?

Wilson said that DOC plans to make the parking process easy and understandable.

“The primary goal is to make parking payment as simple and accessible as possible for visitors, which will minimise the need for issuing breach notices. Measures in place include offering multiple payment options where feasible, providing clear and obvious signage, and using universal, icon-based messaging with large touch screens on the parking machines.”

If tourists are using a rental car and get a breach notice, Stellar can follow up with the rental company, she said.

“In terms of rental cars, standard car rental agreements typically enable the rental business to directly charge a driver’s credit card for parking, toll roads, petrol top-up and other miscellaneous items.

“Additionally, Stellar does have relationships and agreed methodology with some rental providers to collect breach fees.”

How much will this new parking programme cost?

DOC has said the pilot programme will cost an estimated $3.8 million, funded from the International Tourism Levy.

But it also said the expected revenue over the pilot period from December to June 2026 would be approximately $1.5 million.

Wilson said there is some cost outlay involved in starting up the plan.

“There are several one-off costs: some investment is going into the carparks themselves and some investment has gone into developing processes and installing the hardware required. These are all initial one-off cost that won’t be ongoing.”

She said that if paid parking continues after the trial run, the plan would quickly pay for its start-up costs.

“Just under half of the $3.8 million sum is expected to be collected during the 7-month pilot. If the recommendation from the pilot is to continue with paid parking in certain sites, we expect the initial outlay to be easily made back in another year.”

What will the money be used for?

Although some have called for the funds to be used exclusively for the areas covered by the parking fees, they’ll be used throughout the wider conservation network.

“Biodiversity and visitor network projects exist throughout the country, and DOC will use this revenue where it is most needed,” DOC said in its feedback report.

Hasn’t the Department of Conservation had a lot of funding cuts lately?

Yes. As part of the government’s cost cutting directive, DOC was asked to find savings of 6.5 percent – $31.3 million per year.

The agency has also reported a shortfall in funding to maintain its tracks and huts throughout the visitors network.

There have also been dozens of job cuts at the agency.

At the same time, the government has pledged to boost events and tourism with an investment of about $70m.

The government also plans to unleash growth on conservation land, including opening up more concessions.

What do people think of the fees?

DOC heard from more than 150 submitters during a public engagement process, with the biggest concerns being that locals, volunteers and school groups shouldn’t have to pay for parking, and that the area eligible for local permits should be expanded to the entire West Coast.

At the moment, the area eligible for permits will be restricted to the local districts, however.

At Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks, café owner Grant Parrett has protested that the parking charges will penalise locals and are essentially an unlawful fee to enter a national park.

“I suppose $5 an hour is not very much, but any paid parking is still enough to put the casual visitors off stopping and that will hurt local businesses.

“New Zealanders don’t like paying for parking,” Parrett said.

The locals will be allowed to park free of charge for 20 minutes, however.

“I think the majority of the (public) submissions would have come from Punakaiki,” Wilson has said.

“We understand that people might feel aggrieved – no one likes paying for parking – but we’re trying to work out how to run DOC facilities that are costing us increasingly more.”

Tourism operators say the parking costs should not be a major barrier.

“While operators are mindful of cumulative visitor costs, based on comparable international-visitor park-fee proposals (e.g., US$25/day), we believe the proposed charge is unlikely to be a major barrier to most international tourists,” the tourism group TIA’s Ingram said.

“The pilot is an opportunity to test how this goes, and we look forward to working with DOC on the insights it provides and any future changes.”

Aren’t foreign visitors going to be charged additional fees to visit some places, too?

Yes, but that’s likely a year or two in the future.

The government has announced it is planning to introduce new foreign visitor charges at Milford Sound, Aoraki Mount Cook, Mautohe Cathedral Cove and Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

Foreign visitor fees are already common in many countries.

“I have heard many times from friends visiting from overseas their shock that they can visit some of the most beautiful places in the world for free,” Conservation Minister Tama Potaka said, calling it “only fair” that foreign visitors make an additional payment.

The earliest visitor fees would be introduced is summer 2027, a spokesperson for Potaka’s office has previously told RNZ.

In the announcement, a fee figure of between $20 to $40 was given.

“Access charging for international visitors is approximately two years away as legislation is yet to be drafted,” Wilson said.

Parking and access fees could be combined eventually, she said.

“There will be further engagement with stakeholders on access charging during that time, including the combination of international visitor entry fees and charging for car parks in certain sites.”

Parking fees and foreign visitor fees aren’t the only charges going up for tourists.

The International Tourism Levy the government charges to most overseas tourists was raised last year from $35 to $100.

The Tourism Industry Association spoke out against that rise at the time, warning it could “create a significant barrier” and lead to fewer tourist arrivals.

Are more places going to get parking fees?

Once the trial is completed in July, DOC will make a decision as to whether or not to continue and expand paid parking to other sites.

“This is standard practice at many national parks overseas,” Wilson has said about parking fees.

“Most international visitors accept this as a necessary contribution to support the amazing nature they come to New Zealand to enjoy.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand