High-country plan queried

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 28

High-country plan queried

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington The conservation movement is still unhappy about the Government’s plans for 2.7 million hectares of public land in the South Island high country. Proposals to hand this Crown pastoral leasehold and licence land to the new Land Development and Management Corporation were of widespread concern, said the High-Country Public Lands Coalition. This priceless heritage of public land could be freeholded by the Corporation, so losing public ownership and right of access. The coalition comprises the Federated Mountain Clubs, Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, and the Acclimatisation Societies. It was commenting on the Government’s recent decision that pastoral leases and licences will be administered by the corporation. But the Government also recognised the ecological, scenic and recreational values of the high country and has made the Conservation Department responsible for protecting those values, in consultation with the corporation.

The coalition feels that full-scale assessment of conservation and recreation values has to precede the reclassification and allocation of high country land that was predominantly of commercial farming value. Equal statutory powers had to be given to the Department in land use negotiations, it said. The department needed real teeth to protect high country wetlands, tussocklands and wildlife, and should not simply advise the corporation. Farming and commercial concerns could not be allowed to dominate the soil and water, conservation, scenic and recreation values that were so important to the high country. The coalition said the Conservation Department should be empowered to identify land where conservation and recreation values predominated. The department had to assume control of such land.

Adequate funds — at least $5 million — had to be committed to the department so it could fulfil its responsibility to identify the preservation and conservation values on the rr °wn land involved, said the coalition.