Management of class 7 and 8 lands still hotly debated

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 24

Management of class 7 and 8 lands still hotly debated

By

TESSA WARD

Future management of South Island class eight and associated severely eroded class seven high country land has yet to be sorted out in spite of a new land “surrender” policy. On April 1 this year the Government introduced a policy of destocking this type of land and ensuring that those still holding pastoral leases to the land surrender them. Although this policy is decisive it still raises the questions of who assumed management of this type of land and how can the Surrender be carried out most effectively. The main groups involved in this contentious issue are high country runholders, the Lands and Survey Department, catchment authorities, recreational bodies and conservation groups. As the past president of the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand (F.M.C.), Mr David Henson explains, the destocking and surrender policy continues to conflict with a pastoral lease system that was first introduced in the 1850 s. “Pastoral leases for grazing high country, about 16 per cent of the South Island, were issued as pioneering immigrants took up high country runs,” he says. The 1948 Land Act consolidated these pastoral “From 1976 to 1980 any runholder who adopted a run plan came to an agreement with the Land Settlement Board to destock or retire high country currently identified as class eight and associated severely eroded class seven land. This inevitably meant that he had to surrender his pastoral lease of this land and was at times fully subsidised to do this.” Runholders then tended to avoid taking up run plans so the compulsory land surrender was dropped and the land left within the runholder’s tenure, Mr Henson says. “Until April 1 this year the surrender of the pastoral lease for class eight and associated class seven

land was not compulsory. The reviewed policy says that all this kind of land must be identified.

“All significant areas of such land must be taken out of leasehold firstly by a process of negotiation with the runholder and, if not by negotiation, by compulsory means. The agencies administering this reviewed policy are the Lands and Survey Department and the National Water and Soil Conservation Authority (N.W.A.5.C.A.).” Mr Henson says that farmers wanting to hold on to their pastoral leases have quite a strong legal leg to stand on. "The Crown originally gave the runholder a perpetually renewable right to occupy the land which is called ’alienation* from the Crown in legal terminology,” he says. “However, this perpetually renewable right is only a right to graze land in its undeveloped form. “It is a right to pastorage and a lot of this land we are talking about doesn’t have pastorage on it to graze. So an opposing legal argument is that if there is no pastorage on that land then you don’t have a legal right to occupy or graze it.” The Government has yet to indicate who it considers should be responsible for managing the surrendered high country when the new environment administration is introduced. The chairman of the South Island High Country Committee of Federated Farmers, Mr Mike Murchison, who lives at Acheron Bank near Lake Coleridge, says that the runholder is the most appropriate custodian of the class eight and associated class seven high country. “This land requires disciplined management and the runholder, who is trying to make a living from stocking land below it, who provides access tracks and must clean up any mess left behind by others, is the best person to manage that land,” he says. "The runholder’s custo-

dianship of this land can be consistent with N.W.A.S.C.A.’s water and soil considerations for it There are not many runholders who would refuse access to this land across their freehold or leasehold land without a good reason. “It may be that shooting on that land at a particular time of the year drives down stock grazing on lower land next to it and therefore interferes with the runholder’s pastoral programme. Public outcry would ensure that the runholder did not abuse his custodianship or his power to refuse access to the land.” Mr Murchison points out that recent research has shown that runholders have been incorrectly blamed for much of the alpine erosion when natural causes have been found to have had the greatest impact. Recreational and conservation groups would like to see the new Department of Conservation manage this class eight and seven land. Mr Henson says that some runholders have been poor managers of this type of high country and some have restocked it after agreeing to take stock off. “About 40 per cent of South Island high country should not be used productively and the con-

servation and recreational values of this class eight and seven land far outweigh any production values,” he says. N.W.A.S.C.A.’s secretary, Mr Dex Knowles, has outlined some of the likely practical difficulties to be encountered while carrying out the new destocking and surrender policy. “There is a marked reluctance by runholders to surrender this land partly because they don’t want to see a reduction in the size of their estates,” he says. “They would also like to retain control of access to the class eight and seven land and they .feel they would make the best custodians of it “Some runholders, who have agreed to surrender this type of land, find that in order to fence it off adequately, they may have to include some areas of acceptable grazing land above the fenceline. Fortunately, there is growing flexibility about this. “By lowering stock numbers on certain blocks of land the runholder may not have to fence off the surrendered land at all.” Mr Henson says that the Federated Mountain Clubs have for some time supported this idea of reducing stock numbers on certain blocks as a suitable alternative to erecting expensive fences.

“The stock do not generally go into the less attractive higher land to graze when they, are provided with more appealing grazing on lower slopes and terraces,” he says. The Government’s 60 per cent subsidy of runholders’ destocking and surrender costs, such as the erection of a fence, has been reduced from the full subsidy provided during the early 1980 s, Mr Knowles says. “This has added to some runholders’ reluctance to comply with the new policy although they are still provided with offsite grazing as compensation.” Another bone of contention has been the variety of high country that has been classified as class eight and associated class seven land, Mr Knowles says. “Some high country runholders are saying that they want a more finely tuned classification of the high country including more classes of land. They feel this would help to reduce the amount of land that they are obliged to surrender. “All the progress to date with the surrender of high country land has been by co-operative agreement and without the need to use the heavy hand of law. I am confident that in spite of the more decisive new policy this spirit of co-operation can continue.”