I've been having this talk with Guy. I'm not claiming to be the thought originator, either. Its about the cost of digging a hole - or to be more specific, the cost of keeping the hole just so. A hole dug in a typical willow bound swamp will remain a hole for about as long as it takes spring growth to pop up. Extra soil warmth and daylight hours will encourage all sorts of aquatic flora to emerge, and most of the time what grows is not particularly desireable. Normally the purpose of digging a hole in willows is to open water and encourage bird life, more specifically ducks in the case I have in mind, but still its a simple objective. Keeping the water open costs time, effort and money, applied in equal doses. Skimp on one and your hole suffers. So for every dollar you spend on opening a hole, you have to budget say, $0.05 - $0.10 for every year thereafter, keeping the hole the way you want it to be. One of the biggest owners of these holes is AWF&G. The idea is that area user groups maintain the holes at their own expense, which is quite right. There's no escaping the concept of user pays, it's one of the realities of life. But what if the cost of maintaining the hole, or all of the holes, is an unbudgeted expense line in an overall financial plan? Does this mean that if you keep digging holes, you need more and more paid staff maintaining the holes? Something wrong with this picture?
Do we want to be the biggest owner of holes in the land? Maybe. But by being the biggest owner of holes, we are stuck being the biggest owner of holes. By inference you are then stuck being the biggest maintainer of holes.
We have 3 field staff in a region stetching from Raetihi to literally Kaiwaka. If even one of those staff is working on the F&G blocks at 80% capacity, then we're pretty stretched to do anything new. (Why they would be working on the properties is anyone's guess. It's not budgeted for in any approved plan that I can see).
I have to run now, but am keen to come back to this topic soon.
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