Wednesday, 08 September 2010
RESIDING on a lifestyle block in the middle of fruit orchards sounds like an idyllic prospect to most people ...
But for retired Awakeri farmer Brian Shaw and his neighbours on Melville Road it has become a living hell.
Rather than enjoying the peace and tranquillity of country life they are coping with an ear-splitting cacophony that shatters their neighbourhood 12 hours a day.
It is the kiwifruit budding season and to stop birds from eating the new emerging buds – especially the valuable gold kiwifruit buds – growers employ a number of noisy devices to deter the birds.
They use cannon blasts, car horns, high-revving vehicles, motorcycles, shotguns and recorded sounds of screeching birds in distress to keep the birds away.
Some cannon are fixed within the orchards while others are mounted on patrolling ATV vehicles.
The cannon discharges blasts ignited by liquid petroleum gas and the blasts range in sound frequency from deep booms, which send out shockwaves, to ear-piercing cracks.
Mr Shaw said the noise starts at 6.15am and continued until 6.15pm. The cacophony began on Wednesday, August 25, and is set to continue until the end of this month, when it is expected the buds will lose the sweet flavour which attracts the birds
But in the meantime there is nothing Mr Shaw and his neighbours can do about the noise.
According to Whakatane District Council’s district plan, fruit growers are entitled to employ bird-scaring devices but they must not be closer than 50 metres to a home.
The plan notes that some horticultural management options for crop protection generate noise levels that exceed maximum specified levels.
The council said it accepted crop protection was an essential and legitimate part of horticultural farming.
However, Mr Shaw believes it’s time for the council to change its stance and bring in restrictions to combat the excessive noise.
Mr Shaw said the owners of the orchards near his house did not have to put up with the noise – they are absentee owners. One lives in Te Puna in the Western Bay and another lives in Manawahe.
Mr Shaw said there were about six cannon in the neighbourhood and he had to wear earmuffs to protect his hearing.
Even his deaf dog was disturbed by the cannon fire. Mr Shaw said the dog turned her head when she experienced a blast.
He said he had been told the booms and blasts could be heard from as far away as McLean Road and Western Drain Road.
“It gets you down.”
Last year growers in the Melville Road neighbourhood used poison bait to keep birds off their kiwifruit buds.
Mr Shaw collected thousands of dead birds around his property so they would not be eaten by his cats.
Other cats in the neighbourhood were not so fortunate. They apparently died from eating poisoned birds.
Chickens also fell victim to the poison – which has since been banned as a pest management tool by the kiwifruit marketing company Zespri.