Backbencher

The North and South magazines really interest me. You can find a lot of great articles about the New Zealand lifestyle. One article I read was entitled A New Dark Age. The article starts out as just an idea by Graeme Murray. Murray is a prime mover behind a tentative plan to have a part of the great Mackenzie Basin designated as the first Unesco World Heritage Dark Sky Park. This park is an area where artificial lighting is kept to an absolute minimum to preserve the spectacular views of the starry night sky. It is now becoming increasingly hard to find such sites across the New Zealand world. The Mackenzie District Council has already strict regulations on lighting in the area because of the University of Canterbury’s astronomical observation is on top of Mountain John, and light pollution would interfere with the research being done there. But Murray worries that his promotion of the Dark Sky Park may be perceived by cynics merely as a way of boosting revenue for Earth and Sky, an eco-tourism venture he and a few others founded in 2004. Of course, this region has heavy tourism which brought about $96 million in 2005. The rest of the article shows how Murray might deal with this light pollution.

Another interesting article I read was titled Coastal Spirit. This article is about pollution of New Zealand beaches, especially Stewart Island. Stewart Island is in a very remote place. This is a hot spot for most New Zealanders. Clean Up Our Coast is an organization between local schools and community groups that help clean up this nasty trash. This is sort of like a field trip, because they learn about the hazards of marine debris. The rest of this article goes into detail about littering on beaches are huge hazards not only to people, but the animals around as well. An interesting fact, on this Stewart Island, there were 889 pieces of trash picked up in a two hour span. I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand a messy place, especially a great place to relax and have fun like the beach.

These two articles I read I had no clue about. The Mackenzie Basin has many different problems including light pollution, which is a major factor. I would recommend reading up on this. Not only this, but the second article I read as well, Coastal Spirit. I could not believe some of the statistics they had in this article about litter. I was surprised to say the least. I do recommend these two articles to everyone, because along with the great upside to New Zealand, there are also some downfalls, which we have not heard a lot of.