"Settling Some Very Important Principles of Colonial Law": Three "Forgotten" Cases of the 1840's

This article reintroduces the "forgotten" cases of R v Taylor, Attorney-General v Whitaker and Scott v Grace and considers their specific historical contexts. They raise controversial questions about the extent of the New Zealand governor's ability to grant lands outside of the provisions of local ordinances and imperial statutes by using the prerogative. The article notes the flow-on effects of the policy lacuna created by these judgments. The judgments of Justice Chapman and Chief Justice Martin caused considerable unease on the part of the colonial government and policy-makers in London as well as some New Zealand Company operatives. This in turn led to the subsequent legislative and policy efforts to qualify the reach of prerogative powers in colonies. The text of the cases is appended to this article

John Salmond and Native Title in New Zealand: Developing a Crown Theory on the Treaty of Waitangi, 1910-1920

This extended essay argues for a new approach towards the writing of constitutional histories of the Crown within New Zealand. It looks specifically at the conceptions of the relationship between the Treaty of Waitangi, the common law and customary interests that the Crown and its legal advisors actually employed in internal deliberation and external positioning. In looking at the processes for articulating the Crown's preferred legal position during John Salmond's tenure as Solicitor-General, this article notes the overwhelming prevalence of statute and Treaty-based conceptions in law (as well as areas of historical change and discontinuity). Common law approaches emerged in the later twentieth century through newly minted theories or doctrines of aboriginal title but were never regarded as distinct options by the historical actors themselves. The concern of this article is with how those actors – most notably Salmond – conceived, acted upon and adapted their perception of the Crown's constitutional obligations to Māori.  In mapping the course of a Crown legal "register" or way of speaking about native title and the Treaty of Waitangi, the essay aims to reveal the rich and contested nuances of the approaches assumed by the legal advisors to the Crown on the question of the Treaty from 1910 until 1920 and its relevance to a governmental outlook on customary property

Visualisation Tools for Multi-Perspective, Cross-Sector, Long-Term Infrastructure Performance Evaluation

Across different infrastructure sectors there are systems that help to monitor the current and near-future operation and performance of a particular system. Whilst Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are critical to maintaining acceptable levels of functionality, they do not provide insights over the longer timescales across which strategic investment decisions play out. To understand how individual or multiple, interdependent, infrastructure sectors perform over longer timescales, capacity/demand modelling is required. However, the outputs of such models are often a complex high-dimensionality result-set, and this complexity is further compounded when crosssector evaluation is required. To maximise utility of such models, tools are required that can process and present key outputs. In this paper we describe the development of prototype tools for infrastructure performance evaluation in relation to different strategic decisions and the complex outputs generated from capacity and demand models of five infrastructure sectors (energy, water, waste water, solid waste, transport) investigated within the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC). By constructing tools that expose various dimensions of the model outputs, a user is able to take greater control over the knowledge discovery process

The use of artificial neural networks to diagnose mastitis in dairy cattle

The use of milk sample categorization for diagnosing mastitis using Kohonen's self-organizing feature map (SOFM) is reported. Milk trait data of 14 weeks of milking from commercial dairy cows in New Zealand was used to train and test a SOFM network. The SOFM network was useful in discriminating data patterns into four separate mastitis categories. Several other artificial neural networks were tested to predict the missing data from the recorded milk traits. A multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network proved to be most accurate (R² = 0.84, r = 0.92) when compared to other MLP (R² = 0.83, r = 0.92), Elman (R² = 0.80, r = 0.92), Jordan (R² = 0.81, r = 0.92) or linear regression (R² = 0.72, r = 0.85) methods. It is concluded that the SOFM can be used as a decision tool for the dairy farmer to reduce the incidence of mastitis in the dairy herd

Effects of gill-netting on reef fish populations in central New Zealand

Morphological differences and species-specific behaviour significantly affect the number of a species caught in a gill-net. The primary factor that determines how a fish is caught in a gill-net is the shape of the fish's body. Fusiform fish (e.g., labrids) are usually gilled or wedged in the nets, whereas laterally compressed fish (e.g.,latrids and cheilodactylids) are more commonly tangled. Tangling in gill-nets is not as size-selective as gilling or wedging. The catch of gill-nets does not increase linearly with time. The nets appear to become saturated after c.1o hours. The degree of damage to fish caught in gill-nets increases with the duration of the set. The behaviour of reef fish near gill-nets can significantly alter their susceptibility to being caught. Some species, such as spotties (Noto/abrus celidotus), make contact with the mesh of gill-nets less frequently than others. Consequently these species are less susceptible to becoming caught. Vulnerability to becoming caught in a gill­ net appears to be dependent on swimming motion, behavioural differences and visual acuity. The conclusions of this study are that there is little relationship between the composition of the fish population observed on reefs and the composition of the catch of gill-nets subsequently set among these populations. Some species of fish are more susceptible to gill-nets because of their behaviour or morphology

Spatial effects of the Canterbury earthquakes on inanga spawning habitat and implications for waterways management

WCFM & MERG Research Report 2016-002The Canterbury earthquakes resulted in numerous changes to the waterways of Ōtautahi Christchurch. These included bank destabilisation, liquefaction effects, changes in bed levels, and associated effects on flow regimes and inundation levels. This study set out to determine if these effects had altered the location and pattern of sites utilised by īnanga (Galaxias maculatus) for spawning, which are typically restricted to very specific locations in upper estuarine areas. Extensive surveys were carried out in the Heathcote/Ōpāwaho and Avon/Ōtākaro catchments over the four peak months of the 2015 spawning season. New spawning sites were found in both rivers and analysis against pre-earthquake records identified that other significant changes have occurred. Major changes include the finding of many new spawning sites in the Heathcote/Ōpāwaho catchment. Sites now occur up to 1.5km further downstream than the previously reported limit and include the first records of spawning below the Woolston Cut. Spawning sites in the Avon/Ōtākaro catchment also occur in new locations. In the mainstem, sites now occur both upstream and downstream of all previously reported locations. A concentrated area of spawning was identified in Lake Kate Sheppard at a distinctly different location versus pre-quake records, and no spawning was found on the western shores. Spawning was also recorded for the first time in Anzac Creek, a nearby waterway connected to Lake Kate Sheppard via a series of culverts

Opportunities of Grazing Personality Genetics for Steep and Rugged Rangelands

Globally, extensive pastoral grazing systems are facing multiple pressures, including to address emerging public concerns about environmental impact and animal well-being. This may require new regulatory constraints to be met, while maintaining the economic viability of the systems. One novel approach to addressing these challenges is to capitalize on naturally occurring differences in livestock behaviors, specifically differences in grazing personalities, to assist the production systems deliver more effective and responsible use of rangelands. Herbivores may exhibit consistent grazing behaviors over time and across spatial contexts, which differ among individuals and between groups leading to distinctive grazing patterns known as grazing personalities. A study conducted in steep and rugged rangelands of New Zealand with GPS-tracked cows (n = 303) that were genotyped for variation in a ‘grazing gene’, the glutamate metabotropic receptor 5 gene (GRM5), revealed genetic associations (P \u3c 0.02) and trends towards associations (P \u3c 0.1) with home range, movement tortuosity, elevation range and horizontal distance travelled. In an average herd, two GRM5 genotypes associated with medium-sized home ranges accounted for 72% of cows, another two genotypes associated with the largest home ranges accounted for 16% and the remaining 12% had the genotype with the smallest home range. Furthermore, genotypes with the largest home range had the least ‘crooked’ movement tortuosity. Here, we propose changing the proportion of GRM5 genotypes in cattle herds to better match the collective grazing patterns within steep and rugged rangelands. For example, increasing the proportion of GRM5 genotypes with largest home ranges and straightest movement tortuosity may lead to decreasing grazing frequency of vegetation at several scales (e.g., individual plants, plant communities and ecological sites) and better utilization of the available forage. We highlight opportunities of a GRM5 grazing personality approach to improving collective grazing patterns of beef cattle in steep and rugged rangelands to enable more sustainable pastoral grazing systems