'We have a biodiversity crisis' - new Minister of Conservation says things will change

Friday, 27 October 2017

Minister for Conservation and Minister for Land Information, Eugenie Sage, says preventing loss of species, better tourism infrastructure and pushing for a massive drylands park are on the agenda

An empowered Department of Conservation (DOC) will work to stop the decline of thousands of at-risk species after years of underfunding, its new minister says.

Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage said the country was in the grips of a biodiversity crisis and serious work was needed to halt the decline of the nearly 3000 at-risk species.

More planning was needed to manage the growing number of tourists, Sage says.

She heads an agency critics have said was neglected by the last government, resulting in staff cuts and compromises over its core role of species protection.

The new Government had promised a 'significant increase' in DOC's budget – the exact figure would be set in collaboration with Minsiter of Finance Grant Robertson.

Sage has an interest in protecting the unique landscapes of the Mackenzie Basin.

* Mixed reaction to $178m in extra tourism and DOC funding

* The true cost of DOC budget cuts**

Sage said her priority as minister would be to slow the decline of the country's biodiversity and to better protect wild landscapes.

'We've got distinctive plant and wildlife in New Zealand that are part of our national identity and the huge underfunding and slashing of the DOC budget over the last nine years has really compromised the ability for the department to do its job,' she said.

'We need to get those species out of trouble.'

She hoped DOC would become more active in providing its expertise on biodiversity issues to councils by submitting on consent applications for activities such as large water takes and mining.

She also believed better planning was needed to manage tourism growth, primarily by funding regional infrastructure in provincial towns and cities.

'We need to do much better planning around how we cope with this increase in visitor numbers.

'To me it makes sense to have more accommodation, more visitor services, in our provincial cities and towns so they are the nodes for exploring the conservation estate, not putting new hotels on public conservation land.'

Sage personally supported a tourism levy, but such a decision would need to be made by the wider Government.

Another issue she would look at was the fact New Zealand had no deep-sea marine protected areas.

Sage was also Minister for Land Information, which has authority over all Crown-owned land including hundreds of pastoral leases, the Christchurch red-zone and many riverbeds.

It also heads the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) and the controversial tenure-review process, which has split the Crown's many high country leases into private and conservation land.

The two departments together manage more than 100,000 square kilometres – nearly 40 per cent of the country's land area. DOC also plays a significant role in New Zealand's largest industry, tourism.

A major issue in the portfolio was the loss of ecologically important land in the Mackenzie areathrough tenure review, she said.

Intensive land uses such as dairying had started to affect water quality in high-country lakes and a shift to more sustainable high-country farming practices was needed, she said.

There had also been slow progress towards developing the 200,000 hectare Mackenzie Drylands Park, proposed in the cross-group Mackenzie Agreement.

'We've seen in some recent tenure reviews in the Mackenzie area, which have high conservation values, being freeholded … There needs to be better collaboration between LINZ [Land Information New Zealand] and DOC to protect those tussock-land landscapes and to get the park established.'

She said the OIO had been underfunded and the public had been losing out in some of its decisions, such as the sale of the Hunter Valley station lease to American broadcaster Matt Lauer.

'The criteria in the act are very subjective and there's been a failure to resource the OIO. Enforcement action has been virtually non-existent.

'There's certainly significant room to strengthen the Overseas Investment Act and the way in which it is implemented. The office has been a rubber stamp under National and that needs to change.'