This layer identifies parts of rivers that are used by various fish species for spawning. MPI needs to know that, so that it can regulate forest logging on the immediate sides of those rivers.

The original spatial data for each non-migratory fish species was received from the department of Conservation (DOC) as individual shapefiles for each species. These data showed the habitat range of species along rivers indicated as slim buffers (~1-2m). These buffers, however, are indicative only and do not represent the areas where the regulation applies, because: a) size of these buffers are too small falling short of the regulation requirements, b) river data used as the basis of this layer has spatial inaccuracies which makes it impossible to locate the exact boundaries of the buffer areas that the regulation would apply. The above layers were merged into one spatial layer and the attributes were standardised to comply with the rest of spatial layers within the NES (National Environmental Standards) fish database. The added attributes included scientific names, common names, spawning period and migration habit of fish species. Some of the species received in this category from DOC are known to be migratory (diadromous) which are generally identified as WhiteBait.

This dataset was revised in July 2019 and was published following Gazette in November 2020

Data obtained from:

https://data-mpi.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/MPI::non-migratory-fish-spawning-habitats-november-2020-1/about

Data last updated July 10, 2023