DOC 'gives up' on high country

The Department of Conservation is "giving up" on ecologically valuable high-country land because of funding cuts, conservationists say.

Documents released under the Official Information Act reveal DOC is pushing for less land than it previously sought under the tenure review process on some Mackenzie Country farms because it cannot afford to manage it.

In the documents, which relate to five high-country stations in the Mackenzie Basin, DOC high-country tenure review manager Mike Clare tells staff in an email: "We cannot afford to take on new lands with high ongoing management costs so therefore we need to take a pragmatic approach to our position in the high country in light of today's environment."

The documents cite "statements made by ministers", "diminishing funding" and the Government's new high-country policies as reasons for the changed stance.

Clare's emailed comments came after Land Information New Zealand (Linz), which manages the tenure review process, ignored DOC's previous conservation recommendations for the farms.

While that was disappointing, Clare said: "We are working in different times. The advice provided (for tenure review properties) goes for the core values that we can easily defend and shows that we are working within the Government's policies, which is what is now required."

Clare told The Press yesterday that DOC was providing conservation advice on each property but it had to take into account Government policies "and our own circumstances".

Under National, DOC's $1.6 billion budget has been cut by $54 million over four years.

Conservationists say the change means less high-country land will come under DOC control, leaving more ecologically valuable land to be freeholded, or protected with a covenant that offered "questionable" protection.

Forest & Bird southern field officer Sue Maturin said DOC's backdown set a "pretty appalling precedent".

It flew in the face of its own expert ecological advice, and put significant conservation land at risk from privatisation, intensive farming and irrigation.

"There will be such extensive freeholding with just covenants – that's quite a frightening prospect for conservation in the high country," she said.

"What we're going to lose is a treasure-house of biodiversity; extensive, undomesticated landscapes that are the hub of the Mackenzie tourism industry."

Tens of thousands of hectares is proposed to be irrigated in the basin for intensive farming, but Maturin said almost half of that land was Crown-owned and permission was needed to undertake the irrigation.

"DOC is charged with advocating for and protecting conservation values on behalf of all of us but they're shying away; they're giving up really," she said.

Andrew Simpson, the lease holder for Balmoral Station which is mentioned in the documents, said the tenure review proposals for the property would soon be publicly advertised.

"There's a win-win opportunity where conservation values can be managed at no cost to the Crown."

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said DOC's legal responsibility to advocate for and protect biodiversity values was being undermined.

"We're losing massive biodiversity, as well as public land turning into private intensively farmed, polluting dairy farms," he said.

"Behind closed doors DOC is being gutted, effectively, and partly that's happening through self-censorship as they read the direction coming from the Government and partly new policy and cuts in funding."

The tenure review properties mentioned in the Forest & Bird documents are Maryburn, Irishmans Creek, The Wolds, Simons Pass and Balmoral stations, which overlook Lake Pukaki and had been considered for a drylands park.

An email from October reveals internal disquiet over proposals to freehold important conservation areas in Simons Pass Station.

A DOC ecologist said the unprotected areas contained important landscape and recreation values, nationally rare ecosystems, dry shrublands that include rare species, high-priority terrace shrublands, numerous lizards and invertebrates.

A Linz spokesman said the government department would be looking into the matter further.

Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson said yesterday these was "tough times". It would take some time before DOC's budget would start increasing again.

- © Fairfax NZ News