Making connections in the Upper Clutha

Over the lat few weeks I’ve had the chance to meet come great people and make some new connections, all as part of trying to spread the word and get support for the didymo project. A big thank you to Allan Kane and the Upper Clutha Angling Club who hosted an evening talk in the Wanaka Community Hub on 22nd Oct, that was very well attended. I had the chance to outline where things are at with research into controlling didymo (i.e. nothing is happening) and to sketch out our plans to try to get on top of it.

It was great to hear the ideas, opinions, criticisms and suggestions from the audience. The youngest attendee was aged 9, and the oldest was a fair bit older! I was introduced to some great people, including some who are on various Trusts and Boards, who were keen to help. It also lead to a meeting with Miles Anderson, MP for Waitaki, who kindly gave up his time to listen to the plans, and he was also interested and keen to help.

The more people who discuss it, think about it and spread the word, the more likely we are to get all the best ideas, cover off all the likely problems, and together come up with the best plan of attack. If you know of anyone who might be able to help - please have a chat to them and/or put me in touch with them.

Thanks to the generous donations from you and other members of the public, we now have enough to start the first study (looking for viruses that infect didymo). We now need some didymo samples, so if your local river is starting to bloom with rock snot, please let us know so we can chat with the locals, and hopefully collect some samples.