30 January 2008 Media Statement

NZ Official Yearbook 2008 to highlight conservation

Conserving the natural environment will be a unifying theme throughout the 106th New Zealand Official Yearbook this year, Statistics Minister Darren Hughes said today.

“There is growing public interest in the state of our natural environment and the importance of conservation issues generally,” he said.

“I congratulate Statistics New Zealand for its decision to make our natural environment, and its conservation for the benefit of current and future generations, the theme for the New Zealand Official Yearbook 2008,” Darren Hughes said.

Themes are used in Statistics New Zealand’s popular yearbooks to provide a common thread for each publication’s sidebar stories. Although sidebars do not generally contain official statistics and data, they support, supplement and enhance the main content by elaborating or highlighting significant related events, achievements, or trends.

“Together, the extra stories and the official statistics build a snapshot of key aspects of present-day life in New Zealand, and how it is changing over time,” Darren Hughes said.

Believed to be New Zealand’s longest-running publication, Statistics New Zealand publishes an official yearbook every second year. The New Zealand Official Yearbook 2008, which will contain a wealth of information supplied by over 300 contributors and is coordinated and quality-checked by Statistics New Zealand staff, will be published in late 2008.

Note to Editors
The theme of the New Zealand Official Yearbook 2006 was How we measure up – in areas such as population, health and education – against Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries (http://www.stats.govt.nz/store/2006/10/2006-yearbook.htm).

All contributors were invited to submit articles on the environment/conservation theme for potential use as sidebars in the 2008 publication.

ENDS

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