Page 27 - Rangitata River News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

“There just doesn’t seem to be enough feed for them, some chicks are so weak that they can barely move. “It’s a real concern to the anglers because without seabirds you don’t really have a river.” Hodgson added there has been insufficient food for the birds due to the degradation of the Rangitata River. JOHN BISSET/Stuff Peter Ritchie says some black billed gull chicks near Rangitata are too weak to fly because of lack of feed. Ritchie said the birds going out to sea for their feed were largely “coming back empty”. “The adults are dying as well as the chicks,” he said...

Artist impressions of how the Countdown Supermarket at the new Showgrounds Hill development will look. The go-ahead for a retail development for Showgrounds Hill, the SC RSA building's demolition, and the return of a beloved cat missing for two years, all made the headlines in December, as Doug Sail discovered in the final instalment of our series looking back at the year that was. The controversial Timaru retail development proposal at Showgrounds Hill was granted resource consent on December 11, less than a day after a ruling that the application was not headed for public consultation. Pe...

Supplied The size of the hail that hit Timaru in a storm in November 2019, causing more than $170 million in damage. Multi-million dollar insurance payouts for fires and a storm were big news in The Timaru Herald during November, writes Doug Sail in an ongoing review of 2020. The insurance bill for Timaru’s 2019 hailstorm reached $170.98m in November making it New Zealand’s costliest weather event this century. The Insurance Council of New Zealand’s (ICNZ) figures released a few days before the one-year anniversary of the storm, listed the hailstorm in the top five of the most expensi...

Hodgson said anglers knew the behaviour of the river better than most people. “While not all anglers have a tertiary science, environmental or engineering degree, expert anglers have a Ph.D. with honours in angling. To be an expert angler, you need to understand: river morphology, the ecology of the river, river dynamics and most importantly be able to spot and adapt to changes in the river to catch fish.” He said anglers had recently observed the river flat lining at the mouth. “This means that the river flow now no longer rises because of the rainfall events, as it used to. Often ...

John Bisset/Stuff The San Aotea II, pictured leaving Timaru's port in early June, berthed back in Timaru in August 2020. A rescue and a retrieval featured prominently in June’s news coverage out of South Canterbury, writes Doug Sail in the sixth instalment of our series looking back on the year that was. Sanford deep-water fleet manager Darryn Shaw said the trip to the South Georgia Islands was necessary because of the impact of Covid-19, which had made it difficult to get people out of the Falkland Islands. ‘‘Normally we would bring our people back by air, via South America, but that...