Worry over Heritage scheme

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 3

Worry over Heritage scheme

The main concern of the Forest Service is the proposal to split it and the State’s presence in forestry down the middle.

Mr Kirkland questioned whether it was in the national interest to do this, or to put control of half of New Zealand’s land area with an organisation—Heritage New Zealand—whose mandate would be dominantly preservationist. Repercussions from this proposal would extend well beyond the Forest Service, he said. Naturally, Forest Service staff were concerned about how the proposal would affect their own careers.

The working party’s report had advocated a separation of the administration of land-use into preservation and development, as being the best way to achieve the Government’s

policy of integrating conservation and development, Mr Kirkland said. However, inconsistencies were apparent in the way the separation had been proposed, he said. These could be addressed and corrected but, rather than just accept the working party’s proposals, the Forest Service believed that the most efficient and effective way to achieve integration was to combine forest and land management functions at the executive level.

Two strong commissions to make policy and to monitor policy would be needed to present the conservation and development viewpoints, respectively, he said.

Mr Kirkland recommended that the Government consider the earlier Forest Service paper “Future Development and

Directions,” concurrently with the report of the working party on environmental administration.

He asked that all aspects of both reports be examined, the comments of forestry organisations and clients of the Forest Service be sought, and the unions responsible for the interests of Forest Service employees be given the chance to comment.

Changes proposed by the working party would mean a reduction in the area of forests administered by the Forest Service from 3,500,000 ha to 500,000 ha, Mr Kirkland said. These changes would

mean a reversal of the 65 years of progressive evolution towards a fully integrated Forest Service, he said. The result would be to separate the State’s forestry expertise into two agencies with a high level of subsequent duplication. Mr Kirkland criticised the working party’s report for acknowledging few, if any, of the strengths in the present forestry administration.

He also criticised it for not dealing with the “people side” of the report’s proposals, which impinged on a wide range of people in and outside the State services.

Heritage New Zealand was dismissed as “a supposedly preservationist department that is a pot-pourri of preservation and development management that ought to be restricted to heritage-type responsibilities only if the philosophy of the working party were to be followed consistently.”

Consolidation of the management of the Crown’s forest and associated wildlands into a single department would be more efficient and effective than the division of conservation and development forest administration into separate agencies, Mr Kirkland said.