Kia ora koutou, Greetings everyone. Welcome to Sustainable Wellington Net's Newsletter #15. In this newsletter we have site news, an invitation to the WCN launch, eco-ideas for Christmas, improvements to the Kapiti rail service, the first New Zealand Pedestrian Profile, carpooling at WestpacTrust, West Coast logging, and book reviews on WWF's Living Planet Report 2000 and The Cultural Creatives. SITE NEWS New entries on the Network Page since the last newsletter are the South Coast Marine Reserve Coalition and the Wellington Marine Conservation Trust. The new Kakapo Recovery Programme website has been added to the Network and Resources Pages. The site features history and information about the kakapo, and details on the innovative management activities being undertaken by DOC staff to save the last 62 birds. Will also feature regular updates on developments. Contains video, sound, heaps of pictures, and a competition for kids. The Gipps Street Butchery in Karori stocks organic pork and has been added to the Retail page, along with the related Murrellen Pork link on the Corporate Ethics page. The IUCN Red List of threatened species has been added to the links page. Lots of work has been going on behind the scenes with both the Wellington Green Map and setting up Sustainable Wellington Net as the WCC's Environmental Channel. A limited run of Green Maps is about to be distributed to local environmentalists for their feedback. WCN (WELLINGTON COMMUNITY NET) LAUNCH You're invited to the launch of WCN on Wednesday the 13th December at 5.30, in the Central Library Foyer. Mayor Blumsky will launch it along with a formal endorsement by the WCC of the Helsinki declaration on the bridging of the Digital Divide. CHRISTMAS IDEAS Looking for a great Christmas present for yourself or a loved one? A WWF Gift of Support includes an introductory letter, a WWF T-shirt and car sticker, 3 back issues of their newsletter, and WWF newsletters throughout 2001 - all gift wrapped and posted. $49.95 including GST and P&P. Phone Sarah Lee on 499 2930 or e-mail A Project Crimson calendar: This attractive 12 page calendar depicts pohutukawa and rata in a range of urban and rural settings, with photos drawn from some of the best received in this year's Project Crimson photo competition. How about a Forest & Bird gift membership? Membership includes 4 issues a year of the excellent Forest & Bird magazine. This full colour magazine weighs in at around 50 pages and always includes interesting and well researched articles on our native flora and fauna. Membership is also available to their Kiwi Conservation Club where kids aged 5 to 12 can learn about the fascinating world of nature whilst being challenged to read, draw, or decipher puzzles. The ECO Store is an Auckland retail store and mail order company whose primary aim is to make it easy for you to use authentic green products in and around your home. Free catalogue. Become a member of Karori Sanctuary or have your name inscribed on a fence post plaque. WRC COMMITTED TO IMPROVING KAPITI COAST RAIL SERVICES From WRC's Transport Division has just allocated money in its budget to purchase land at Lindale for a new commuter carpark and railway station. Once the land is secured, plans will start for the construction of the station and carpark, scheduled to begin in 2002. Kapiti Regional Councillor Chris Turver says this is just one way that WRC is demonstrating its commitment to providing a high quality passenger rail service on the western corridor. In addition to this, WRC has just approved $190,000 to extend Paraparaumu railway station into Kapiti Coal and Wood, which has been given notice to move by Christmas. The upgrade will provide for an extra 50 parking spaces and the sealing and marking of the existing carpark. Due to population growth and increasing demand for rail services on the Kapiti Coast, WRC is also planning to increase peak time frequency of trains from Paraparaumu to Wellington from 30 minutes to 15 minutes next year. Meanwhile, plans are still underway to start building a railway station and commuter carpark at Raumati next year, and WRC is hoping to have rail electrification extended to Waikanae by December 2001. For further information please contact Chris Turver; phone 06 364 3646 or e-mail RELEASE OF THE FIRST "NEW ZEALAND PEDESTRIAN PROFILE" From the final edition of WalkTalk. New Zealand's first national pedestrian profile is now available. Written by the National Pedestrian Project (NNP) with funding from the Road Safety Trust and data analysis support from the LTSA, the "New Zealand Pedestrian Profile" provides a wealth of information on pedestrian activity and injury in New Zealand. Some of the key points include: 1. Walking is the glue that binds our urban transport systems together. It is not only an essential transport mode for those with limited access to a motor vehicle, and an integral component of most public transport trips, but also an important part of many motor vehicle journeys. A survey of regional household travel in the Auckland region found that 36% of travel journeys combined motor vehicle use with pedestrian activity. 2. Walking is a sustainable, efficient and economical mode for short journeys. As a nation, around 46% of our household travel trips are estimated to be for distances of under 2 kilometres. The sustainability of our transport system depends on not only on increasing the efficient use of the transport network by motorised traffic for long journeys, but also increasing the use of non-motorised modes such as walking for short trips, particularly in our urban areas. 3. Walking has considerable economic, health & social benefits. It provides valuable cardiovascular exercise for individuals, enhances the liveliness of communities, supplies the "foot traffic" that is essential to local businesses, provides the "eyes on the street" that help keep our neighbourhoods safe, and enables older members of the community to remain socially connected. Copies of the full profile can be down loaded as a PDF file from . The announcement also included a revealing editor's note: Readers who happened to see the TV3 and New Zealand Herald coverage on the launch of the profile could be excused for thinking it was a report on leisure walking and fitness. In both cases, information and interviews provided to the media by the National Pedestrian Project stressed the transport issues. In both cases, the media decided to focus primarily on the health consequences of a decline in walking, approaching health representatives for quotes to support this. The coverage received is perhaps an excellent illustration of how often walking is relegated to being a "health" issue rather than being dealt with as a serious transport issue. WESTPACTRUST PROMOTES EMPLOYEE CARPOOLING From the Sustainable Transport Network Newsletter #13 - an idea for Wellington? Employees at WestpacTrust in Auckland are being encouraged by the company to carpool to work. WestpacTrust created the initiative to get behind Auckland Regional Council's 0800 SMOKEY campaign (see article in this newsletter). While the campaign was running, staff who carpooled to work were offered: * T-shirts from WestpacTrust * ARC's Natural Masterpiece T-shirts * a certificate from WestpacTrust. The initiative was promoted through the company's internal newsletters, mail and e-mail systems. WestpacTrust's Regional Sponsorship Manager, Kim McWilliams, says the campaign's results have been very encouraging and that it has brought an awareness of the issues to employees. For more information contact Kim McWilliams, WestpacTrust. Phone 09 302 4246, e-mail WEST COAST LOGGING From Nick Young, National Coordinator, Native Forest Action The "Buller Overcut" has officially finished. Finally! The "overcut" is the rimu logging operation that even Timberlands admits is unsustainable. It has caused massive damage to many forests in the Buller so it's very good news that it's over. However, the so-called "sustainable" logging of Okarito, Saltwater and several other old-growth forests south of Buller is set to continue until April 2002. So there is still work to do! Things have quietened down a little recently but rest assured we are still here and we are intend to keep the pressure on the government to stop logging old-growth forests on public land. Please stay in touch and keep those donations coming! Your support is invaluable and greatly appreciated. BOOK REVIEW: The "Living Planet Report 2000" In October, WWF launched its latest living planet report, which revealed that if every human alive today consumed natural resources and emitted carbon dioxide at the same rate as the average person from the US of A, Germany, or France, we would need at least another 2 Earths. This free PDF file shows that the natural wealth of the Earth's forests, freshwater and marine ecosystems has declined by one third since 1970. It highlights that the area required to produce the natural resources consumed and absorb the carbon dioxide emitted by humans has doubled since 1961, and by 1996 was 30% larger than the area actually available. BOOK REVIEW: THE CULTURAL CREATIVES From Rachel's Health & Environment Weekly #711 A new book titled THE CULTURAL CREATIVES offers important insights into U.S. culture and how we might organise to change our future. It offers entirely original, new perspectives that could help the environmental and social justice movements find new paths, sidestepping the troubles that have stymied them in recent years. The authors Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson have spent more than a decade doing survey research to discover the values that we in the U.S. hold dear. ("Values are the best single predictor of real behaviour," they say.) They find that, based on fundamental values, U.S. citizens can now be classified into three major groups: Moderns, Traditionals, and Cultural Creatives. We all recognise Moderns and Traditionals, but most people don't know that the Cultural Creatives exist. Even the Cultural Creatives themselves are not aware of their huge numbers - 50 million strong, according to Ray and Anderson. Here lie the seeds of a cultural revolution - one that is already well along. YOUR FIRST STOP FOR LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS _ Hei kona mai, Goodbye for now.