We have elected a Government that by its actions has little respect for the extraodinary conservation heritage that New Zealand's people have protected over the generations and that remains the envy of the rest of the world.
Nationally, the Conservation Minister Tim Grosser is silent in defending the wonders of our national parks and conservation lands and reserves from threats to them. His cabinet colleagues are not so silent.
Agriculture Minister David Carter has been outspoken throughout 2009 in his opposition to high country lands being allocated to the Department of Conservation for conservation management.
Last year Associate Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson told a Canterbury newspaper that farmers were better at looking after natural lands than her own Conservation Department.
Economic Development Minister Gerry Brownlee seems to have more to say about conservation lands than the responsible conservation ministers. His latest outburst is that he wants to hear from New Zealanders about whether a Haast-Hollyford highway should be carved through the heart of the South West NZ World Heritage Site. This will destroy this wilderness as well as killing many of the endangered tawaki penguins that breed on the coastline that the highway would destroy. It will also breach the World Heritage Convention that NZ is a signatory to. Brownlee's desire to investigate minerals in National Parks and other special conservation areas has been supported by both the Prime Minister and the Conservation Minister who both talked about "clinical and sensitive extraction" of mythical minerals from these areas..
Congratulations to Sir Alan Mark for standing up against this outrageous Government behaviour. He deserves all our support.
Not surprisingly there has been a conspicuous lack of leadership from the Conservation Department who at best can say that they have been bullied into compliance by the new Government. The NZ Conservation Authority is perhaps one hope of a public voice against the destruction of the principles that make our conservation heritage so special. We wait NZCA Chair Don Ross's views on this with great anticipation.
Perhaps this cowardice of calling the Government to account on its attitude to our clean green reputation is one reason why Anne of Auckland can report in this chat room the flagrant breaches of the Reserves Act that are going on unpunished as follows:
After seeing this news item http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/6697818/warning-after-tourists-land-on-poor-knights-islands/ about people landing on Poor Knights (NZers no less), and seeing a couple of other items about people accessing various DoC estate or letting their dogs run free in areas where they've been told not to, I wonder if it's my imagination, or are the public freely accessing DoC estate in a "we can go anywhere and do whatever we like on this crown land" a bit more now?
Posted 3 days ago #