Dawn ceremony for DoC's office merger

The two Department of Conservation offices in Whangarei have made the logical move into shared premises.

The merger of Northland Conservancy headquarters and the Whangarei Area Office into a building at Southend Ave was blessed by local kaumatua at a dawn ceremony yesterday.

Visible from State Highway 1, the new public face of DoC will be called Piritahi - meaning "together as one".

Formerly, the Conservancy Office was in Bank St and the area field office was in Kaka St. Renovating a former Southend Ave veterinary clinic to accommodate the two DoC departments took several months.

The move follows other belt-tightening measures handed down by the Government in the past two years, including trimming the number of DoC staff taking care of Northland's large conservation estate.