January 6, 2009

About 200 hectares of the internationally recognised Awarua wetlands has been destroyed by a fire that started a week ago, the rural fire service said.
And the cost of battling the fire which flared up again on Friday had now reached half a million dollars.
About 34 underground hotspot areas had yesterday been identified and would take several days to extinguish, Southland deputy principal rural fire officer Elton Smith told the Southland Times.
Mr Smith said 20 firefighters were using hand tools to dig up each hotspot area, some up to 100m long, before putting out the burning embers.
'If we don't deal to them it will keep burning underground and pop out in unburnt areas and reignite.'
The fire first destroyed more than 400ha of private pine plantation before spreading to conservation land.
The fire flared up again in high winds on Friday night.
Native forest was burned in the latest blaze while lizards and fern birds would have been killed, DOC conservation officer Brian Rance said.
'There were fires in the wetlands every few years.'
Southern Rural Fire District principal rural fire officer Mike Grant said the cost of fighting the fire was approaching the half-million-dollar mark,
The Department of Conservation called for tighter restrictions on landowners lighting fires following the latest blaze