Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/79539

I just posted about this on [email protected], but anyone who cares about NZ wildlife, tourism or climate change should have their say on this.

MBIE's Tourism Environment Leadership Group has developed a Draft Tourism Environment Action Plan. They say:

The draft action plan aims to ensure tourism has a positive impact on the natural environment and proposes 6 focus areas to achieve this. These areas or Tirohanga Hou (new pathways) are:

• Tourism journeys are decarbonised
• Tourism champions biodiversity
• Visitor management is optimised for te taiao (nature)
• Accelerated technology uptake and innovation enable regeneration
• Tourism businesses are incentivised and enabled for sustainability and regeneration
• The tourism system and its levers are optimised and resourced to support regeneration

Each area has multiple actions that will deliver positives not only for the environment but for communities and tourism operations.

Some actions see the tourism industry working with communities to create a picture of what healthy visitation looks like. Others focus on supporting and incentivising tourism operators to adopt sustainable or regenerative practices. Rapid investment in low-carbon technologies for long-haul travel is another key action.

You can take their survey here. It's anonymous and took me about 10 minutes. The full plan and info about how else to make submissions is here.

There's an RNZ article about this, but they mostly focus on "sustainable airline fuels".

Got this photo of a nesting baby matuku moana / white-faced heron on holiday a few years back. Spotted it up in a tree at Grossi Point Reserve near Mapua, Tasman District.

This is a fungus that should be visible this time of the year, can often be found in gardens with a good mulch bed

I just found out about the Aotearoa Species Classifier via this post.

It's made by members of the TAIAO project at Waikato and Canterbury universities using AI trained on photos from iNaturalist.

Then someone told me in that thread that the iNaturalist app already had its own auto ID feature.

The Aotearoa Species Classifier works offline, and seems to be better at IDing than iNaturalist, but they're both good. The Aotearoa Species Classifier also has an online web classifier that has more powerful models and tools than the app.

Aotearoa Species Classifier

• Google Play Store
• Apple App Store
• Web Classifier

iNaturalist

• Google Play Store
• Apple App Store

Canterbury Regional Council will build a 48-kilometre-long pest fence as part of the war on wallabies.

Wallabies had spread outside the containment zone and Biosecurity NZ estimated they could cover a third of the country by 2050 if no action was taken.

"This week's expert is all about fungi! Dr Mahajabeen Padmamsee from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research joins Anna to talk about all things mushrooms.

From foraging to the role they play in the ecosystem Dr Padmasee is covering all aspects of mushrooms and fungi, particularly in Aotearoa."