I am a director of Southdown Holdings Ltd that owns 2,130 hectare Glen Eyrie Downs on Quailburn Rd near Omarama in the Mackenzie Basin. It is proposed to irrigate this land in order to farm sheep, cattle, undertake some cropping and some dairy cows. Dairy farming provides the highest and best economic use under irrigation.
After reading a great deal of emotive comment on this site along with similar sentiments in recent nationwide advertisements in weekend newspapers I decided it was important to balance the highly emotive publicity with a few real facts.
1] There is no tussock on Glen Eyrie as it is a working farm with 2,000 hectares being cultivated and planted in crops following removal of 1,200 hectares of wilding pines in 2007/08.
2] The land was irreversibly altered 150 years ago when it was given over to graziers who overstocked with large mobs of sheep brought down from their summer mountain grazing lands to avoid snow during the winter. They were fed on hay, meal and grain and grazed the land down to bare earth, even chewing the moss of the warratah standards. Anything left was claimed by plagues of rabbits to the extent the ground cover remaining is a broad all consuming flat weed, hieracium, some browntop and of course the ever present wilding pines.
3] Such is the depletion of the exposed soil that following winter frost heave, 2.5 tonne of topsoil per hectare is blown away each year (ref: Department of Conservation)
4] The quickest way to save the soil is to plant grass and the only economic way the grass can be maintained and thrive is to apply water and fertiliser and the only way this can occur is if the farmers have a guarantee of continuity of supply of water to ensure economic sustainability. Without water the land will continue to be depleted and a weed infested wasteland will be the result.
5] Left alone the land will not revert to tussock but to wilding pines, hieracium and depleted windblown soils. Wilding pines grow 1 metre per annum and start seeding at age 4 years. Seed is blown by the wind and the spread is inevitable. Based on aerial photos of Glen Eyrie between 1985 and 2007 the wilding pine population went from zero to 1,200 hectares, up to 25 metres high and impossible to walk through. To view the changing landscape just look across Lake Pukaki as you travel south to observe thousands of hectares of wilding pines climbing towards the snow line or as you drive north up the road to Mt Cook the land on both sides totally blocks the immediate views.
6] Prior to 1985 on Glen Eyrie, thousands of sheep would graze in and around streams as this was the only area that grass would grow without irrigation. Under SHL Farm Environmental Management Plan all aquatic life and waterways will now be protected and enhanced.
7] DOC advice is that the most effective and successful area for the establishment and perpetuation of the black stilt species is in a wet, nutrient enriched area adjacent to the Tekapo River below an existing extensive area of border dyke irrigation at the southern end of Haldon Rd. Such is one benefit of irrigation.
8] Irrigation will assist establish and provide food for a large population of birdlife where very little presently exists. As a condition of consent to irrigate, indigenous tree and plant species will be re-established along stream and wetland boundaries where none presently exist.
9] Approximately 12,000 hectares are already being irrigated in the Mackenzie Basin. There are 8,000 dairy cows presently being farmed on irrigated land with all milk being supplied to Fonterra. Considerable additional sustainable economic benefit will occur to the farming and local community and to NZ as a consequence of an additional 25,000 hectares of proposed irrigation. Additional water was allocated by the Labour Gov't in 2005 (Upper Waitaki Water Allocation Plan) and derogation approval has been granted by Meridian Energy to the water applicants in the ECan hearing in 2009.
10] During the spring thousands of dryland hectares of the Mackenzie Basin are annually planted in crops of ryecorn, turnips, kale, lucerne, clover and other crops. Utilisation of additional irrigation provides an economic extension to the growing season and ensures sustainability of pastures and subsequent benefit to the farmers. It is therefore incorrect to say that irrigation alone will turn the Mackenzie Basin from brown to green as each spring and early summer it is already green.
11] Glen Eyrie Downs is a freehold farm created under the Labour Gov't Tenure Review Programme after DOC had selected and removed land of special environmental value and placed it into DOC Estate. As a consequence the owners of this land have the same rights to farm, subject to applicable environmental constraints, as any freehold farm in New Zealand.
12] Legends and myths in the Mackenzie Basin are created by stories about a shepherd and his dog stealing sheep and perpetuated by TV, artists and poets and accepted as fact by people who seldom travel through the Basin.
13] If you wish to see and understand the truth as stated please drive through the Mackenzie Basin, look closely at the land and drop in to meet the farmers and have them show you the reality. For its part, SHL would welcome visitors who are genuinely interested in becoming fully informed.
Richard Peacocke
