Interviewed for a River conservation film: "Seven Rivers Walking"

Through my river conservation work I was interviewed for this New Zealand River Conservation Film in 2017. 

I also did an extended feature about industrial pollution of the Heathcote River, which is available in the bonus features section of the DVD of the film.

It is a film about Canterbury Rivers, now showing in Christchurch, and on tour around New Zealand.

For you keen salmon anglers, it features interviews with Fish & Game New Zealand and Salmon Anglers on the Rakaia.

It was a privilege to appear in this documentary talking about Heathcote River protection, which is what I do for a day job as a freshwater advocate.

My focus is Haytons Stream in the upper Heathcote River, near my home in Christchurch.

Haytons Stream was once so clean that wild salmon ran up the Heathcote River to breed in it, but these days I have never seen anything living in it. I am working on that though, and hope to enable fish to return to it one day!

Click here to watch the trailer:


Seven Rivers Walking


I'm going to go watch it at the Tannery theatre tomorrow! https://deluxecinemas.co.nz/movies/seven-rivers-walking/#

One of the sponsors of this film was my employer, The Canterbury Regional Council.

P.S. remember to enrol to vote in the central AND local Government elections, and make your vote count for clean water for fishing!

Filming Fly-fishing in NZ with the BBC Natural History Unit

In 2016 I was privileged  to fly-fish for the BBC's Natural History Unit in New Zealand.

We flew into a wilderness NZ river with the BBC cameramen and worked hard for a week to capture the footage of the trout taking a mouse fly. Perhaps 80 hours of fishing and work to capture just a couple of minutes worth of the perfect footage. 

They did an amazing job with their cameras and drone, and I'm very pleased with the end result.

Thank you to Tore at www.flytackle.co.nz for the excellent Sage rod and fishpond waist pack used in the filming.

In June 2017 the BBC posted an extended version of just the fishing footage on YouTube, and my good mate Svend Jensen recently sent me a link to it. I am stoked to see that it has received almost 100,000 views in the year since it was posted.

Check it out: 

The video is called "Huge Trout Eats Mice".

Click here for Youtube video 

The series showed to an audience of 120 Million people around the world. In different counties the 3 part documentary series went by different names, and in New Zealand it's called Wild New Zealand. 

If you were in NZ you could watch the full Wild New Zealand documentary online at

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/ondemand/wild-new-zealand 

If you're outside NZ, then it can be accessed through the BBC's website.

The BBC documentary makers were real professionals, and it was a privilege to have this opportunity to work with film makers at the top of their game. They had amazing stories from their previous locations, such as the elephants of India. 

They were also surprised to discover that New Zealand is rapidly being transformed into one giant dairy farm. Where ever they went they found paddocks, grass, stock, and lost forests - this is the untold story of NZ which lurks behind the 100% pure marketing campaign.