Andy England Royal Society of New Zealand
by Andy England
photos by
Andy England has a dream job for a year. Normally a teacher, Andy has a year off to find out all he can about how important the rivers of New Zealand’s West Coast are.
Andy was awarded a Teacher Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. He’s working with the Department of Conservation and Lincoln University to describe the significance of West Coast rivers to whitewater kayakers. Sony NZ, Pyranha kayaks and Palm UK have all recognised the importance of this work and helped out.
So far, Andy has been doing ‘Phase One’, kayaking as many West Coast rivers as possible and taking geotagged photos of all the key features (put in, gorges, major rapids etc). This gets recorded into trip reports and a located photograph database which creates a stocktake of the West Coast rivers in 2010.
Andy’s also been attending Lincoln University to develop a survey of kayakers who’ve been to NZ’s West Coast. This is where you might be able to help! Andy is about to launch this survey through blogs, Facebook and website links. He’s aiming to reach everyone who’s kayaked on the NZ’s West Coast...so if you’ve been there or know someone who has, please look out for the West Coast NZ River Survey and give it a go.
Andy hopes his work will achieve two main things: create a detailed record of what the whitewater rivers look like and find out what it is that kayakers value about them.
What's in this for kayakers? Well, various decisions are made that affect us - like hydro developments and access limitations - by people who currently know very little about our world. Andy’s project should provide both us and them with new information about what we have and why we value it, which in turn should lead to better decisions. This could be useful anywhere in the world, not just in New Zealand.
Andy was inspired to do this by fighting hydro developments and finding that decision makers use such outdated information about kayaking. Other activities, like fishing, have very well developed data sets about what they do. Kayakers are then left defending our interests without much credible evidence.
Andy’s survey comes out soon. Because of some rules about ethics in surveys, it can’t be completed by under 18 year olds but he would hate to rule out any young guns so please do get in touch with him directly. His contact details are:
Andy England
westcoastwhitewater@gmail.com
westcoastnzriverstudy.blogspot.com
by Andy England
photos by
Andy England has a dream job for a year. Normally a teacher, Andy has a year off to find out all he can about how important the rivers of New Zealand’s West Coast are.
Andy was awarded a Teacher Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. He’s working with the Department of Conservation and Lincoln University to describe the significance of West Coast rivers to whitewater kayakers. Sony NZ, Pyranha kayaks and Palm UK have all recognised the importance of this work and helped out.
So far, Andy has been doing ‘Phase One’, kayaking as many West Coast rivers as possible and taking geotagged photos of all the key features (put in, gorges, major rapids etc). This gets recorded into trip reports and a located photograph database which creates a stocktake of the West Coast rivers in 2010.
Andy’s also been attending Lincoln University to develop a survey of kayakers who’ve been to NZ’s West Coast. This is where you might be able to help! Andy is about to launch this survey through blogs, Facebook and website links. He’s aiming to reach everyone who’s kayaked on the NZ’s West Coast...so if you’ve been there or know someone who has, please look out for the West Coast NZ River Survey and give it a go.
Andy hopes his work will achieve two main things: create a detailed record of what the whitewater rivers look like and find out what it is that kayakers value about them.
What's in this for kayakers? Well, various decisions are made that affect us - like hydro developments and access limitations - by people who currently know very little about our world. Andy’s project should provide both us and them with new information about what we have and why we value it, which in turn should lead to better decisions. This could be useful anywhere in the world, not just in New Zealand.
Andy was inspired to do this by fighting hydro developments and finding that decision makers use such outdated information about kayaking. Other activities, like fishing, have very well developed data sets about what they do. Kayakers are then left defending our interests without much credible evidence.
Andy’s survey comes out soon. Because of some rules about ethics in surveys, it can’t be completed by under 18 year olds but he would hate to rule out any young guns so please do get in touch with him directly. His contact details are:
Andy England
westcoastwhitewater@gmail.com
westcoastnzriverstudy.blogspot.com
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