Display focuses on endangered eel

The native and endangered longfin eel is under the spotlight at the Carterton Events Centre.

Rawiri Smith, Ngati Kahungunu ki Wairarapa environment manager, said a display about the longfin eel, or tuna, was set up this week.

He said guest speakers for the week-long event included Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright, who will speak at the centre from 7.30pm tonight on her latest report about the species, which has been described by the Department of Conservation as "chronically threatened, in gradual decline".

Dr Wright has been environment commissioner for the past six years and is also to outline her role and touch on other reports her office has produced.

Second guest speaker is Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei, who will speak at the centre about the endangered longfin eel from 10am tomorrow.

Green MPs had supported a Wairarapa petition calling for a ban on fishing longfin eels, Mr Smith said, and in March joined a parliamentary parade with the Elvis the Eel mascot and a 200-metre long eel made of cloth during the presentation of the "Lifeline for Longfin" petition.

"The longfin eel display is celebrating our people's involvement in raising the issue. The focus is on community solutions from pre-school to whanau, to primary schoolchildren, to community champions through high schools and politicians, who figure alongside people like the parliamentary commissioner," Mr Smith said.

The iwi authority had generated some "local momentum" concerning long fin eels and interested parties were to engage with the display over the coming week, including artists, scientists, environmentalists, schools, politicians, industrial eel fishers, recreational eel fishers, kaitiaki, iwi leaders and the wider population.

"The local eel issues this builds on include indirectly the Homebush sewage ponds, directly the protest march, directly the report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, indirectly our iwi's Treaty claims and indirectly the Mangatarere Restoration Society."

Scientists and conservation groups have growing concern for the survival of the species as they can be legally fished, and have a slow reproduction rate, breeding only once at the end of their lifetime. In 2003, a scientist had warned their numbers would have declined by up to 30 per cent by this year.

There were reports last year that some pet food companies in New Zealand were using the threatened species in their products, sparking outrage.