TE NUPEPA O TE TAIRAWHITI SATURDAY-SUNDAY, JUNE 5-6, 2021 HOME-DELIVERED $1.90, RETAIL $2.70 FOUR DIE IN DUMP SITE HORROR RUBBISH ON KAITI HILL ‘DISHEARTENING’ PAGE 3 CRASH INSIDE TODAY PAGE 6 by Sophie Rishworth PORN has become the primary sex educator for young people and adults need to start SHEDDING talking about it. That was the main message from a workshop in Gisborne this week. More than 60 professionals — teachers, nurses, police officers, sexual heath educators and counsellors — who work with rangatahi/ youth gathered to listen to The Light Project’s LIGHT Nikki Denholm present Porn and Young People in Aotearoa. Data presented at the workshop showed 71 percent first saw porn by accident, 41 percent found it on a non-porn site and sexual violence like choking had become normalised. Porn has become readily accessible, affordable (mostly free), anonymous and increasingly ON PORN acceptable. “We don’t have the luxury of being silent anymore,” Mrs Denholm told the audience. “Someone is educating our children, and it is the porn industry.” The workshop was about training the trainers ‘Someone is educating — upskilling those involved with youth so they were aware of and understood the landscape they were dealing with. To put into context the changed pornography our children, and it is landscape young people can access nowadays, Playboy magazine, at its peak, had a monthly readership of 7.1 million. the porn industry’ In comparison, online porn site Porn Hub receives 3.4 billion views a month. Of the 200 porn videos most watched in 2019 by young people on Porn Hub, 46 percent had scenes that contained step-family or family members, and 35 percent involved scenes with coercion. Mrs Denholm said she did not believe young people were necessarily searching for this type of content. Rather, sites like Porn Hub were set up similar to YouTube, with a scrolling menu of videos on the right-hand side to try to get people to click on and watch. The ones with the most hash tags, which were picked up by algorithm, are placed at the top. But while young people were learning about sex from porn, this issue was often met by silence from adults,” Mrs Denholm said. Parents viewed it as taboo and were subsequently not talking to their children about it. “The data is sobering but it is important the adults who work with young people are aware of the landscape. “Forty-two percent of young porn users said they wanted to watch it less but found it hard to stop.” Mrs Denholm said some young people reported that choking was seen as a normal part of sex these days. A US study of 5000 university students found 80 percent had tried rough sex within consensual sex. Of those students, 64 percent of women had been choked during sex, along with 29 percent of men and 55 percent from the LGBTQIA+ community. Books and films like 50 Shades of Grey could also eroticise rough sex, she said. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 GISBORNE RUATORIA WAIROA Local News ...... 1-5 Opinion ..............10 Classifieds ... 20-24 Television ....W9-11 Births & Deaths ...4 World............ 11-14 Racing ...............25 Sport ............ 28-32 TOMORROW National..6-7, 9, 15, 18 Farming ........ 16-17 Business ...... 26-27 Weather .............31 977 1175467004 2 NEWS The Gisborne Herald • Saturday, June 5, 2021 Took water from wetland Manuka oil company chief didn’t think resource consent needed by Alice Angeloni likely to be significant due to a reduction in habitat, and loss AN East Cape pharmaceutical of hydrological functions and company has admitted planting indigenous vegetation. manuka over at least a hectare The loss of wetland vegetation of “regionally significant might result in increased wetland” and using its water for surface water, flooding and irrigation. sediment and nutrients Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals, downstream. based in Te Araroa, also Ms Salmond said sediment excavated 460 metres of runoff would return to normal channels in the wetlands to once vegetation had grown back lower the water table to reduce and the drains had been filled ponding and flooding of its in. manuka plantation. She also noted a loss of The company pleaded guilty indigenous bird habitat and to modifying and taking water said if machinery was regularly from Te Whare wetlands used for harvesting, it would in breach of the Resource discourage foraging and nesting. Management Act on February Ecologist Dr Hannah 10. Two charges were brought Dumbleton, who was brought in by Gisborne District Council. by Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals, According to a summary disagreed with the extent of the of facts, Tairawhiti effects the offending had caused Pharmaceuticals managing to the wetlands. director and founder Mark Kerr The vegetation had regrown said he wasn’t and sediment runoff levels aware there would have returned to what was a protected they were prior to the manuka wetland in the being planted. area and he Dr Dumbleton also said most didn’t think of the area converted to manuka a resource was of a degraded, grazed consent was nature and the value of the land needed for the to nesting and foraging birds plantation. would have been low, compared The company to other wetlands in the area. was founded EVIDENCE: Tairawhiti She argued that planting in 1991 and since 1993 has Pharmaceuticals manuka the manuka trees would have operated a factory at Te Araroa plantation. Gisborne District increased the land’s ecological that extracts oil from the Council officers found a pump, value. manuka tree leaves. hose and irrigation equipment Dr Dumbleton considered Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals that ran into the wetland when the boundaries of the wetlands previously harvested wild they visited the site on Februaryas outlined in the TRMP did manuka trees but in November 24, 2020. not reflect the extent of the 2019 established a 30-hectare Picture supplied wetlands on the ground. manuka plantation, some of She believed that some which encroaches on Te Whare areas within the Protection wetlands. PLANTATION: In late 2019, Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals planted No resource consents were Management Area did not form While the company admitted 200,000 manuka trees, some of which encroached on Te Whare obtained. part of the “core wetland” and undertaking work in a Wetlands. Picture supplied When questioned during that the majority of the manuka “protection management area”, hearings on Thursday, Mr Kerr was planted in a drier, marginal, the total area of land that was said the company had chosen seasonally wet area that had of ecological value was disputed February 24, 2020, and found a species such as matuku areas for the plantation that previously been dominated by at a hearing at Gisborne District large area of recently cultivated (Australasian bittern) and were “sufficiently dry and grazed pasture. Court on Thursday, before manuka trees, with some that spotless crake and fish species suitable for cultivation”. Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals Environment Court Judge Brian appeared to be in the wetlands. like giant kokopu. This included areas where has committed to remedial steps Dwyer. They also found a mobile According to the summary there wasn’t any standing water. recommended by the ecologists The area of wetlands planted pump connected to a hose of facts, Tairawhiti In a report assessing including to fill in the drains, in manuka will be finalised running into the wetlands, and Pharmaceuticals used a tractor the impact of the manuka retire the manuka plantation in a joint memorandum and irrigation equipment. to disc and harrow the land to plantation on the wetland, that is in the wetland and to an amended summary of facts The 30-hectare plantation create “uniform terrain” and council ecologist Abigail install a fence. provided to the court on June spans across four properties rows to plant the manuka trees. Salmond said wetlands were Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals 25. owned by four different sets of On November 28, 2019, the one of the “most nationally- has four directors — Mark Kerr, Gisborne District Council multiple owners, with part of Te company started planting threatened and degraded” Peter Jackman, Sydney (Syd) received a complaint about the Whare Wetlands located within 200,000 manuka trees in rows. ecosystem types in New Clarke and Pierre Henare. company taking water from the these four properties. It used water from the Zealand. According to Mr Kerr’s wetlands on February 6, 2020. Te Whare is classed as a wetlands to irrigate the young In the Gisborne region, LinkedIn profile, he is also the The complainant alleged it “regionally significant wetland” crop during a dry period wetlands had been reduced to managing director and founder had caused a drop in water level under the council’s Tairawhiti of weather in January and 1.75 percent of their original of Natural Solutions and the and decline in water clarity, but Resource Management Plan February 2020 by pumping extent, she said. East Cape Manuka Company. this was not confirmed. (TRMP). water from the wetlands into a Ms Salmond said the Judge Dwyer remanded the Council officers visited It provides habitat to portable sprayer that was then potential effect of the plantation company to a nominal date of Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals on threatened indigenous bird towed around by tractor. earthworks on the wetland was July 30 for sentencing. 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