Public ‘misled’ by Minister

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 19

Public ‘misled’ by Minister

In his recent defence of the National Parks Bill, the Minister of Lands (Mr V. S. Young) was misleading the public by insisting that the boards would have increased powers and would be anything more than advisory, according to the president of the Federated Mountain Clubs (Mr D. A. Henson). The preparation of management plans and reporting to the Commissioner of Crown Lands could hardly be called management functions, Mr Henson said.

If Mr Young seriously believed that the management plan system would work, he had been misled by his department. Management plans, according to a senior planning officer from the Department of Lands and Survey in Christchurch (Mr J. Edmonds), produced a “broad statement of policy and general guidelines within which the board could make decisions when the need arose.” Presentation of the document was critical to meet the changing circumstances and it was essential that ' new policies could be added or removed. If Mr Edmonds’s view was the department’s view, management plans which could be regularly altered would be the trend

for the future, said Mr Henson.

In existing management plans, the Mount Cook board did not mention thar or their management, and did not list aircraft landing places, road maintenance plans, or hut replacement plans. The Fiordland plan had no details of management of the Milford Sound or Te Anau areas, and included no mention of Wapiti, or the Milford Track.

The proposed new system, taken with the existing plans and the departmental approach to management plans, would leave very little guidance to park rangers who would be free to make their own interpretation, he said. “Those involved in drawing up the bill must“ surely believe the public is naive when considering the management plan’s implications.” For 20 years the Federated Mountain Clubs had insisted that the adminis= tration of national parks should be above political direction and pressure. For Mr Young to say that the federation opposed the bill, simply because of losing the right to a nominee on the boards, was to denigrate an organisation which had given sterling service to the national parks of New Zealand, Mr Henson said.