http://nz01.terabyte.co.nz/ots/DocumentLibrary/NgatiManuhiriInitialledDeedofSettlement.pdf
"The deed has been signed. Page twenty five refers to a freehold area they will retain after the giftback. It is on plan 125/02 which isn’t attached on the website or described as to size. It is 1.2ha. It is the old garden occupation site with stone walls."
Can someone from DOC Auckland or Forest and Bird Branches in the region explain to readers what their position is on the Crown's recent agreement to subdivide Hauturu-Little Barrier Island Nature Reserve and to freehold 1.2 hectares of the island to Ngati Manuhiri?
Are all the readers aware that this has happened?
Is it true that iwi are planning a tourist lodge on the island?
How can this freeholding have occurred (in secrecy without any publicity) on what is widely regarded as the most precious fully protected Nature Reserve in the North Island, if not in the whole of New Zealand's inshore islands.?
What is the Conservation Minister's position on this? and the position of the New Zealand Conservation Authority?
Some years ago there was intense public debate about the building of a tourist lodge on Kapiti Island and eventually the Lodge was built. But we need to be very clear that on Kapiti, the land where the lodge was built had always been private land and not a part of the Kapiti Island Nature Reserve created and protected by wonderful advocacy in the early days of Forest and Bird.
On Hauturu-Little Barrier, where the entire island was a nature reserve, the Government has agreed to a subdivision and freeholding with the potential to create another Kapiti Island type controversy and a huge risk of pest re-invasion through the easing of access retrictions to the Island.
I ask these questions not because I believe there was no injustice in the way the Crown first acquired Hauturu-Little Barrier. It was unjust. But now through huge conservation efforts by many people over many years it has become one of New Zealand's most important conservation sanctuary islands. This decision now places all this at risk. Perhaps the Treaty Settlement Minister and the Government have taken a secret and "least cost" path of least resistance to reach a Treaty Settlement rather than settling with tangible financial assets.
Will their agreement now put at risk one of New Zealand's most treasured conservation islands?
Why have I not read about this in "Forest and Bird" or the newspapers?.