A new study aims to shed light on the whitewater kayaking potential of New Zealand's West Coast rivers and protect them from development. If you've paddled NZ's West Coast rivers, complete this survey to help.

Andy England is a high school teacher in Greymouth, New Zealand, a city on the South Island's West Coast, but this year he's taking a break from teaching to go paddling. More precisely, England has received funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand to study the West Coast's rivers and their importance to whitewater kayakers.

He hopes his work will achieve two things: create a detailed record of what the whitewater rivers look like and find out what it is that kayakers value about them.

England, a dedicated kayaker with a background in fighting hydro developments, says the task—which he has one year to complete—is a "dream job." 

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-ins, 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.

"This is the stuff you need to help the cause," says England. "Hopefully the work done here can be referred to elsewhere too, like in BC."

Working with the Department of Conservation and Lincoln University, England has been attending the university to develop a survey of kayakers who’ve been to NZ’s West Coast.

The online survey launches soon through blogs, Facebook and website links.  England wants to hear from paddlers around the world who've kayaked on NZ’s West Coast...so if you’ve been there or know someone who has, check back soon at Englands blog for links to the West Coast NZ River Survey and give it a go.

England's survey project was inspired by fighting hydro developments and finding that decision makers still used an outdated 1991 survey. "It was a great piece of work but things have changed since then," says England. "Hopefully, my work this year can go some way to bringing our data back up to speed. 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."

"This project should provide both [paddlers] and [decision makers] with new information about what we have and why we value it, which in turn should lead to better decisions," he says.

The West Coast NZ River Survey comes out soon. Because of some rules about ethics in surveys, it can’t be completed by under 18-year-olds but England invites any young guns to get in touch with him directly. Contact him at:

Andy England

westcoastwhitewater (at) gmail.com

westcoastnzriverstudy.blogspot.com

Andy England on Facebook

Images courtesy: Andy England