a bit more on what this is about...

I have a year off my teaching job to find out all I can about how important West Coast rivers are.

I was awarded a Teacher Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. I'll work with the Department of Conservation and Lincoln University to describe the significance of West Coast rivers to whitewater kayakers and rafters.

The first phase, right now, is to paddle as many West Coast rivers as possible taking geotagged photos of all key features (put in, gorges, major rapids etc). I then interview people about what the rivers mean to them, both in general and for named rivers. For example, do you go to the Arahura for whitewater or scenery, or both, or a social experience, or all of the above and which is most important?! Basically, we'll just have a chat and I'll figure it out later. The more people I can paddle with, the better the range of interviews I can get.

Hopefully, this should do 2 things: get a detailed record of what our whitewater rivers look like and find out what things kayakers/rafters value about them.

Then, over winter, I'll follow up all contacts with a survey to get some figures around what it is that we value. So any help in getting surveys out (and in) will be gratefully received.

What's in this for kayakers and rafters? Well, various decisions are made that affect us - like hydro developments and access limitations - by people who currently know very little about our world. My project should provide both us and them with new information about what we have and why we value it, which in turn should lead to better decisions. I was inspired to do this by fighting hydro developments and finding that decision makers still use a 1991 survey! It was a great piece of work but things have changed since then. Hopefully, my work this year can go some way to bringing our data back up to speed.

I'd love to hear from anyone who cares, whatever their opinion...