Up the River: explore and discover New Zealand's rivers, lakes and wetlands is the latest addition to the 'explore and discover' books, following on from books about the seashore, ocean, garden, and forest habitats.
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| Up the River is the sixth book in the series |
Six years ago I would have wondered how many people might be interested enough in our freshwater habitats to buy a book about them for their children or grandchildren, but now as we release this book, there is broad public interest. There's been much publicity about whether our rivers are swimmable, about polluted drinking water and about the loss of rivers to irrigation schemes.
As a nation we've woken up to the facts - that clean freshwater matters and that our freshwater is not as clean as we would like it to be.
All of these events and debates were going on while I was researching and writing
Up the River. The more I researched, the more I realised that the state of our freshwater was worse than I had imagined. I had to work hard to resist the temptation to make the dire findings and debates centre stage in the book. Why?
