River has special place in my heart

Nicola Young Photo/File

The Whanganui River is in the news this week for the right reasons.

We have won the "best river" poll organised by the Green Party.

A few of my less generous contacts have asked: "Huh? What's so special about the Whanganui? It's not the most pristine river in New Zealand ... is this just a popularity contest?"

Well, yes - it is a popularity contest and our awa won!

No, it wasn't a competition for the cleanest river, or the most untouched river, or the prettiest river.

As Tina Turner would say: "It's simply the best." For me, the Whanganui is incredible. It has this spiritual magnetic quality about it.

One of my favourite places in the world is by the Bridge to Nowhere - a short walk up from Mangapurua Landing after a jet boat ride. This ruin is a tribute to all sorts of things - to the spirit of the returned soldiers who attempted to break the land from 1917, to the feats of engineering undertaken in 1935-36 when the concrete bridge was built without the tools we have today and to the power of nature to take back its own.

The bridge reminds me of Ta Prohm, the overgrown temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, where the Tomb Raider movie was shot. Both places have very solid elements of human built activity that is being reclaimed by trees - or in the Kiwi vernacular, the bush.

Our river is a movie star too - I adored River Queen, the 2005 Vincent Ward movie filmed here. It is a must-see movie that captures the tensions in our colonial history as well as showcasing the powerful character of the river.

Since 2012, the river has had its own legal status under the name Te Awa Tupua, recognising the integrated relationship between the river and its people. The overall Treaty of Waitangi settlement is nearly completion - 141 years since Iwi first started the court process in 1873.

For me personally, I remember the shock when on a Massey University field trip in 1993 looking at environmental issues we visited the headwaters of the Whanganui, at the hydropower intake.

I couldn't believe that a river with as much mana as this could have basically all of its headwaters taken, with only a trickle out the other side.

And while I am a huge advocate for moving away from our carbon-dependent economy, renewable energy sources are not without their hurdles as well.

This is the river I learnt to row on while at Wanganui Girls' College under our much loved coach Jigger. We had many early mornings cutting the oar blades through mist into the glassy river - and unfortunately many more battling the current and stormy waves breaking over the bow, my seat!

My parents have lived on the banks of the river for quite a few years now and my boys love waving at the paddle steamer when it cruises by, trying to get the captain to toot the horn.

Over the years, the river has an awful pollution history with sewage discharged into the river, and still suffers from a high sediment load, from hill country run-off - too much clearance of native forest from steep country that should never have been touched. Luckily a good portion of the river is bounded by Whanganui National Park, so has a high level of quality land management beside it.

Unfortunately for many of New Zealand's rivers, they do not run through national park and instead have increasing pressure from intensifying dairy. We also have other bizarre situations where we have an introduced species, trout, with a high level of protection and management, while an endangered native species, the long-finned eel, is under extinction pressure and commercially harvested and claimed to be used in pet food.

Eels are kaitiaki of our rivers but they themselves are under threat. We need to take care of these special places, starting with our own Whanganui.

Ko au te awa. Ko te awa ko au. (I am the river. The river is me).Nicola Young is a former Department of Conservation manager who now works for global consultancy AECOM.

Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.