Abstract
This briefing highlights valuable and timely lessons for better ways of safeguarding and improving freshwater quality identified by a new report on the failure to protect high-country lakes from degradation.
The new report has received little attention, but its findings are relevant beyond high-country lakes and vital to the success of councils’ next generation of regional plans, which are under development and must be completed by the end of 2024.
Regional plans have broad ecological, cultural, economic, and human health importance and, if the report’s findings are well understood and applied by policy and decision makers, they would support communities moving towards healthier land use and waterways.