Protesters gather in Mt Richmond Forest Park to oppose gold mining
Monday, 31 October 2022
Scores of protesters descended on Mt Richmond Forest Park to challenge the Government over a new mining venture proposed on the conservation land.
Concerned Forest & Bird members gathered on Sunday in an area of the park between Nelson and Blenheim where an Australian mining company has recently been granted a permit to prospect for gold over a 500km2 area that encroaches the forest park.
Forest & Bird’s Top of the South conservation manager Scott Burnett said the group held the rally as they felt the Government had backtracked on promises it had made to end mining on public conservation land.
“We held the protest there to highlight the lack of protection that conservation park status has in New Zealand – it’s not protected from mining.
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“There’s nothing to stop mining from occurring in somewhere like Mt Richmond Forest Park. These things happen. There’s coal mining going on in the Victoria Forest Park on the West Coast, and that land has the same conservation status as the Mt Richmond Forest Park.
“When Jacinda Ardern came into power in 2017 she said Labour would ban mining on the conservation estate and since then there has been 78 new mining permits issued across the country, so Labour is reneging on that promise,” Burnett said.
The protest was party of a national “No More Mines” rally organised by Forest & Bird.
Australian mining company New Age Exploration Limited, which already has several gold mining projects in Otago, was granted the gold prospecting permit for the Mt Richmond park in August.
The company’s head of investor relations Mark Flynn said surveying of the area would be completed over summer and said he wouldn’t rule out future mining operations in the region.
“There’s certainly a lot of work on the cards. There area is highly prospective, but it’s very early days.
“There’s not going to be a Kalgoorlie Super Pit being built in Marlborough, but there’s certainly something down the track. We think it’s highly prospective and if the New Zealand economy (is struggling) and jobs and things like that are required, it’s certainly something we would pursue if that prospectively was proven by our geophysical surveys,” he said.
The Kalgoorlie Super Pit is one of the largest open goldmine on earth, and is approximately 3.5km long, 1.5km wide and 600m deep.
Flynn said he was unaware of the “No More Mines” rallies taking place in New Zealand, but said any mining activity undertaken by the company would strictly adhere to Government and environmental policies in place.
“We’ll follow all the rules and regulations and especially towards the environment. We’re certainly not out there to make any significant changes, so we will follow all local rules and regulations given to us by the New Zealand Government.
“It’s something good (mining) and we’d be happy to work with other groups, we’ll take on everyone’s views, and we’ll follow all rules and regulations,” Flynn said.
However, Burnett said any large-scale mining operations in park would have a profound impact on the surrounding environment.
“There would be impacts. You can’t have mining without impacts. The type of mining that has been carried out for gold in New Zealand has had a massive impact on the environment,' he said.
“This isn’t artisan, small scale mining like we have around New Zealand where people sift river sediment for gold flakes, this is removing big chunks of land to get at the gold seam and make a big hole in the ground.”
Burnett said the area looked at by New Age Exploration Limited included Wakamarina, and any mining activity there would seriously undermine restoration work being carried out.
“The area that they’ve identified in their footprint that they're focused on is the Wakamarina and that falls within the Te Hoiere Catchment Project that millions of dollars of funding is going into supporting.
“There’s a massive project of work going on to do an ecological restoration and sustainable future-proofing project on the whole of the Pelorus catchment and here we have an Australian mining company coming in to potentially dig a bit hole in the ground inside that catchment project.
“I think there’s an issue with international mining companies being able to freely come in and explore around New Zealand for resources on the conservation estate where that land is being held for primarily conservation purposes.”