Clean & green New Zealand

The pages under this header will - over time - be a selection of stories about New Zealand's green, clean image and the reality behind the slogans of Tourism New Zealand, like the "100% pure NZ" brand.

New Zealand's landscapes and the air we and you breathe are under threat. The problem is that most pollution is invisible, with the contributing factors becoming more and more apparent - like, for example, huge irrigators barring the views of the Southern Alps in the High Country in order to turn the amber-coloured tussock grass landscapes into artificially green paddocks for cattle and dairy cows.

The main contributor to the bad water and air quality is the ever expanding dairy industry.

Green but not clean - and not beautiful at all: the barren Mackenzie Country

being turned into green paddocks.

We have heavily polluted lakes and rivers in which you better do not swim. In many places we have sewage flowing straight into waterways. We have forests littered with poison pellets that should kill animal pests like possums, stoats, rats and mice, but which also kill endangered birds.

Carey Dillon, a photographer and woodworker from Kumara on the West Coast where they feel the effects of poison drops and dairy farming full throttle, has created a website about the threats to New Zealand's unique nature many years ago already. If you want to be shocked I recommend to have a look at "Unpure New Zealand - 001% Pure":

http://www.careydillon.com/unpurenzfinal/index.html

This is a website of people who are fighting for the survival of the unique tussock grass landscapes of the Mackenzie Country which a syndicate of business people wants to turn into a huge stinking cowshed:

http://mackenzieguardians.co.nz/

(03.04.2012)