A new environmental group is aiming to expose dirty dairying around the country.

The Environmental River Patrol has forty volunteer members and says it will be monitoring New Zealand’s rivers, and taking photos of stock in the country’s waterways, and posting the information online.    

Environment River Patrol spokesman James Muir says regional council’s are both underfunded and understaffed, so his group will be their eyes and ears.

Mr Muir says the group will be reporting the locations of stock in the country’s rivers.

However, Federated Farmers is warning that the group could add to problems if it makes ill-informed assumptions.

Federated Farmers spokesman Anders Crofoot  says the majority of farmers are responsible, and told Radio NZ that it’s not helpful when people go into areas they don’t understand.

But a MAF report in December 2011 found that only 42 percent of Fonterra farmers have made the effort to fence their stock out of rivers.

Environmental River Patrol spokesman James Muir is also the director of award-winning environmental film River Dogs.