A twin assault on the future protection of conservation land by the Prime Minister and Minister for Resources is cause for alarm, says Forest & Bird’s Chief Executive, Nicola Toki.

“For a Prime Minister who prides himself on being a business leader, promoting the destruction of the wild places and wildlife that underpin our most significant export earners is short-sighted thinking and makes no economic sense,” she says.

In his State of the Nation speech on Thursday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spoke in support of expanding mining on public conservation land.

He was backed up today by Minister for Resources Shane Jones, who appears to be in denial that stewardship land is public conservation land that is home to treasured and endangered native flora and fauna.

“If the Government wants to super-charge the economy, focusing on a boom-bust industry that brings in peanuts in royalties, and which costs the taxpayers millions of dollars in clean-up efforts, seems wrong-footed from an economic standpoint,” says Ms Toki.

Forest & Bird will continue to support New Zealanders to oppose these destructive activities and reminds the Prime Minister that in 2010, 40,000 people marched down Queen Street, demanding that high-value conservation land be protected from mining.That public outrage led to his predecessor, Prime Minister John Key, listening to New Zealanders and halting mining plans just like the proposals being promoted again now.

“New Zealanders have already made it clear to previous governments that they love our native wildlife and wild places and will not stand for mining on public conservation land which belongs to all of us,” Ms Toki says.

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“Our mountains, forests, wetlands and rivers and our precious native wildlife define us as Kiwi. Public conservation land is just that: land that has been entrusted to the government for conservation purposes.

“New Zealanders rightly expect all governments to act as stewards of this land and to protect it for current and future generations, not to rip it up for mining.

“The Government needs to understand that our environment is our economy. Last year, the value of tourism to our public conservation land alone was worth more than $4 billion dollars.

“Whittling the Department of Conservation budget down to nothing, reducing environmental protections, and prioritising mining over one of our biggest export earners, tourism, makes no sense at all,” she says.

New Zealand’s tourism industry is worth $13 billion a year and the government wants to grow this further. Open-cast mines, heavy trucking on the West Coast and environmental destruction on the Coromandel are not going to pull in tourists coming here to enjoy our country’s natural unspoilt beauty.

New Zealand’s primary industries are worth $56 billion a year and are underpinned by the freshwater and soils provided upstream by conservation land. Primary exports trade heavily on environmental credentials and attract a premium based on New Zealand’s clean green image. Destroying conservation land places this reputation squarely in the firing line.

Aotearoa New Zealand has also entered into key free trade agreements with the UK and EU worth billions of dollars. These contain clear provisions around environmental protection. Environmental U-turns being driven through the Government’s resource management reforms are raising questions about these agreements.

On top of this, there are the legacy risks that ultimately fall to taxpayers. The Tui mine clean-up cost taxpayers $22.5 million – more than the $21 million in crown royalties the government gathered from mining last year.

“This is just the latest salvo in the Government’s ongoing war on nature,” Ms Toki says. “At a time when we need our leaders to be standing up for the environment, it’s especially alarming that the Prime Minister’s State of the Nation speech didn’t once mention it or climate change.”

Notes:

Forest & Bird is calling for a ban on mining on public conservation land. Draft legislation was prepared during the previous government following a commitment in the 2017 Speech from the Throne.

Since 2017, a total of78 mining access arrangements on conservation landhave been granted, with more exploration and prospecting permits covering over 150,000 ha of conservation land. Approved mining activities on conservation land include exploratory drilling for tungsten near Glenorchy; gold exploration in the Coromandel; and permits granted across Northland, Rotorua and the West Coast to a billionaire Aussie mining magnate.

Numerous new coal mines have been proposed for conservation land, including the West Coast’s Te Kuha Mine which Forest & Bird battled in court for years, a new resource consent application for a coal mine in indigenous forest near Reefton that would continue until 2050, and planned widespread mining on the biodiversity hotspot of theDennistonPlateau.

The fast-track legislation has removed environmental protections that would have prevented a number of mining projects from taking place. Under this legislation, the ability for communities to raise objections to activities has also been severely limited.

New Zealand is also a signatory to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework which provides a framework for global biodiversity action. This includes a target to “ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognising indigenous and traditional territories, where applicable, and integrated into wider landscapes, seascapes and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.”

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