Decision hailed by Clark as setting conservation model

Press, 27 July 1988, Page 3

Decision hailed by Clark as setting conservation model

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The High Court decision on native forests in Nelson has been welcomed by the Government. The Waimea County Council had imposed conditional use planning controls over the clearance of native forest on private land and the Court held that this was lawful. The Court decision was the culmination of a long campaign by the conservation movement to get the local authority to intervene.

The Conservation Department estimates that

2000 ha of native forest on private or Maori land is being cleared each year. A range of initiatives was needed if important native forest on private land were to be protected before a significant proportion of it was cleared, said the Minister of Conservation, Ms Clark.

If more local authorities adopted conditionaluse controls that would be a helpful initiative.

Much of the forest that remained on private land was small in scale compared with the grandeur of the original forest, she said.

Yet, particularly in the North Island, these remnant areas were significant for the plants and wildlife they contained and for their local biological and landscape values. Making the removal of indigenous forest a conditional use, as the Waimea County Council had done, did not remove all rights to alter the resource and so did not in itself protect the forest. It did ensure, however, that any decision to log s was aired in public with j the Planning Tribunal as I the final arbiter, Ms Clark said. This allowed for a

wider section of values <to be considered in evaluation. Just as the landowner might argue for the right to clear the forest for timber or for farmland, the community could argue the case for protection of native forest ecosystems in the same way that it argued the case for the protection of landscape values and historic buildings. “I hope the High Court’s decision will encourage pther .local authorities to adopt, .similar controls :on indigenous forest clearance,” she said.