New Conservation Minister low profile

PHIL REID/Dominion Post

GETTING TO GRIPS: Tim Groser, the new Conservation Minister, struggles for recognition in the environmental fraternity.

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Managing the country's conservation estate may not be the new Conservation Minister's only battle.

It seems Tim Groser also has an uphill fight to lift his profile.

Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board member Mandy Waaka-Home enquired at Friday's meeting over the identity of the new minister.

When told it was Tim Groser, she replied: "Oh, that well-known environmentalist he's so well known I don't know him."

Groser, an international trade expert, was New Zealand's ambassador to the World Trade Organisation.

Gavin Rodley, the private secretary for conservation, said the minister would leave for climate-change talks in Poland this week as part of his trade portfolio.

"That's been the priority for him for the moment," he said.

"I think his intentions are to do a lot of reading over the Christmas-New Year period and in the first few months of next year he'll come to grips with his conservation portfolio.

"He'll be meeting people, going to events and visiting places as well."

Canterbury conservator Mike Cuddihy said at Friday's board meeting that Groser was supposed to open the new Mount Cook Visitor Centre in March, but because of his trade commitments his office had yet to commit to a date.