I’ve been a bit busy this week: Sunday had a driven day at Lakelands and had a good day although I was tired as, for the short week (the week prior) it was a bloody long 4 days. Saturdays AWF&G meeting added to my ’enlightenment’. We needed to know how the budget and Operational Working Plan ‘hang together’ – i.e. who decides how much, and where funds are being spent. And how to influence fund allocation. All right, so under normal circumstances I would expect that an induction process would be held for new councillors, so that by now (meeting 3) we would really be in the swing of things. But alas, prior to meeting 2, in April, was the time to put forward new initiatives. How? By putting together working papers, gathering momentum at club level (remits) and then pushing forward to council for discussion, then approval or … not. Without that understanding everything could stand still. Frustratingly its 6 months wasted. On the other side of the ledger, it’s been an investment in trying to understand the system. At least now, after a fairly fluent description of historical events and current funding structure, I/we know that there is no money in the till for projects other than those funded by grants, from trusts etc. You could say that F&G block pond holders keep winning and winning. My personal belief is different, I view the hold put over them to be a restriction that I’m glad I don’t face. The budget does have allocation at a $ per rate for overall projects such as “game bird management”, “compliance” etc etc as laid out in Schedule A of the OWP (which is a more detailed view than Schedule B, which is laid out at a level that could be deemed a “public document”). Either way, in my opinion every stake holder who buys a license should make themselves very familiar with this document. So I asked, how does the next grand scheme or idea become a reality from a perspective of gaining approval and/or funding? Well, it all comes down to preparation and the budget calendar. The idea must be put forward, discussed, costed and driven into the central budget, which is then put forward to NZ Council – there is a contestable fund that is badgered for that can cover projects/schemes costing over and above the day to day running costs for “doing business”. Wow. So either deliberately, or unknowingly, we’ve missed an entire budget cycle. Bear in mind here that I didn’t have a grand scheme to contribute or promote, but at least we now know how. On it goes. One neat thing, this week I’ve been doing game bird harvest surveys, as have AJ and Guy. And man, has it been enlightening. Due to my “technological challenges” I’ve managed to screw up their on-line surveys (used wrong survey period, double entered same hunters – doh, doh DOH). But it’s just great to have an excuse to talk with some hardened and some not so hardened hunters. What I can say is that if you have a good spot, put in time and effort (especially time) then good tallies are there for the taking. Some of the really good hunters are keeping bag diaries and can tell date, time, species taken, birds lost – the works. Neat.


Off to gold Coast tomorrow. Work, not fun.