DOC have just announced that they are going to build a new $6.8 million Visitor Centre at Punakaiki on the West Coast in the Paparoa National Park. Meanwhile they are about to eliminate 100 DOC jobs and banish most of the field scientists and field technical staff to big city "hubs"
Is rural NZ to be abandoned by knowledgeable DOC field staff. Will retail and visitor centre DOC staff eventually be the majority of DOC staff left in our Parks and Conservation Land?
To do a complete pest control operation using aerial 1080 for the whole of the 35,000ha Paparoa National Park with existing tried, tested and very successful helicopter techniques being used by DOC on the West Coast would cost approx $14/hectare. This totals $840,000 for the entire operation. It would take approximately 2 days of fine weather and you'd first do a pre-feed of non toxic baits to increase the effectiveness of the whole operation. This means DOC would kill in the high 90s and perhaps 99% of total pest species (rats, possums, stoats but not deer) with an application rate of about 2kg of 1080 baits per hectare.
The West Coast evidence is that to keep rat, possum and stoat numbers at a sustained low enough threshhold to allow bird breeding and plant recovery, you would have to repeat the pest control operation approximately every 3 years.
The annual cost therefore of efficient pest control over the whole Paparoa National Park would be $280,000 annually..say round it up to $300,000 annually. Animal Health Board is already controlling pests over part of this National Park in the AHB TB control operations so lets assume that AHB pick up 1/3rd of the annual pest control or $100,000.
So for $200,000 per annum from DOC, the entire Paparoa National Park could be getting regular and effective pest control by DOC. Presently it isn't getting that control over the whole Park in a systematic and regular way.
If the $6.8 million DOC plans to spend on its Punakaiki Tourism Monument was invested at say the current rate of 5% it would yield $340,000 annually in interest.
That could fund their whole $200,000 net cost entire Paparoa National Park Pest Control operation indefinitely. There would also be $140,000 per annum left over to do something more modest for the tourists at Punakaiki for which the tourists could surely pay a user fee. (Remember the DOC adage "Entry is free but users have to pay for facilities" or does that only apply to Kiwi trampers not tourists?")
A healthy vibrant Paparoa National Park full of native birds and healthy trees is a much greater conservation legacy to our children and New Zealand than an architectural masterpiece. The annual DOC staffing and running costs alone for the Visitor Centre will undoubtedly exceed the $200,000 annual nett cost of an effective Paparoa National Park pest control operation. Besides once DOC start peddling T shirts, books and chocolate bars in a futile effort to fund the Centre, they will probably destroy the viability of the present private sector shops at Punakaiki...and those shopkeepers that aren't bankrupt will still be very very bitter at the Government muscling them out of their businesses.
It makes you think. I'm sure it must also make the the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment think too. In her 1080 review this year, she slammed DOC for abandoning 7/8ths of NZ's public conservation land to pests despite DOC being legally required to protect those lands against those pests to save native biodiversity.
DOC's excuse for not doing effective pest control over the entire Paparoa National Park will undoubtedly be that it hasn't got the funds. So what about its plans to spend $6.8 million this year on the new Punakaiki Visitor Centre?
Priorities...... Minister Wilkinson...Priorities!
