Should Fitzroy Shopping Centre be open to freedom campers?
New Plymouth District Council proposes to have 11 spaces available for freedom campers in the Fitzroy Shopping Centre car park.The amendment has been proposed in order to address the issues arising at Waiwhakaiho River mouth, preserve community access at other popular coastal sites in the district, and disperse freedom campers across the district to reduce overcrowding.
However New Plymouth neighbours have banded together to try and stop public car parks from being turned into a freedom camping zone. Councillor Murray Chong says the public facilities near the Fitzroy Shopping Centre would not sustain the 11 vehicle allocation and that campers came to the region to "rest their wallet" so they could pay for attractions in the likes of Taupō and Queenstown.
Local business owners believe that the lack of car parking at the Fitzroy shopping centre is already a problem and that this move will only make the situation worse.
Read the full story here.
Image: Stuff
Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
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