Beach bulldozers spark anger

Sunday, 17 December 2017

Conservationists are demanding action after a commercial crayfish company drove a bulldozer along Ward Beach to launch its boat. 

Forest and Bird regional manager Debs Martin said the move, by Ward-based Burkhart Fisheries, threatened the habitat of the endangered banded dotterell.

However, Burkhart Fisheries have hit back, saying they did not drive onto the nearby scientific reserve at Chancet Rocks, but drove along the beach as any vehicle is allowed to do.

Martin said the dotterell was already facing enough with rats and stoats and possums.

 'The last thing they need is someone driving a bulldozer down the beach to form a road and destroy their nests,' Martin said.

She said once others saw the access way that had been made they would also use it.

**READ MORE:

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* Environmentalists and commercial fishers go head-to-head over proposed launch site

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* Series of DOC presentations in Kaikoura highlight diverse wildlife**

'This is now a Marlborough District Council compliance issue and they need to act immediately,' Martin said.

Earlier this year the commercial crayfish company, the single biggest employer in Ward, was denied permission by the Marlborough District Council to form a 1.5-kilometre road from Ward Beach to the Chancet Rocks, part of a scientific reserve, to access a new launch site after their old site at Ward Beach was left unsuitable due to seabed uplift in the earthquake.

An appeal of that decision is pending. 

Burkhart Fisheries managing director Dennis Burkhart said on Saturday that fishers were legally allowed to drive on the beach to launch their boats and they needed the shortest route possible and access on most tides. .

'That part of Ward Beach is an unleashed dog area. The dogs, and people walking on the beach there, would do a lot more damage to the dotterell nests than any bulldozer taking a boat down the beach,' he said. 

Burkhart said the effects of the bulldozers, which happened for about three months in total each year, would be obliterated by the next big storm.

He said fishers were conservationists and cared about bird life and the shoreline at least as much as anyone else.

'Yesterday, we saw State Highway 1 open again from Ward to Kaikōura, that's dozens of kilometres of roadworks, much of it alongside the beach and nobody's said boo,' Burkhart told Radio NZ.

'Yet our efforts to keep doing what we have done for four decades or more and to keep 30-odd local jobs going, just keep getting hammered.' 

The council had passed a bylaw governing any vehicles being driven on beaches, enacted in May this year to protect dotterell habitat and other coastal ecology.

Bulldozers had traditionally been used to launch boats at the main Ward Beach, but the latest activity extended several hundred metres to the north toward Chancet Rocks, a scientific reserve of international standing.

Council chief executive Mark Wheeler said he was aware of the activity at Ward Beach, but did not know how extensive it was or if it contravened any bylaws.

He said compliance officers led by manager Gina Fergusson had been out to the beach and were monitoring the situation.

'We didn't think there was much happening, but there appears to be more activity so we will monitor that,' Wheeler said.

Wheeler said action could include an abatement notice 'but we would first have to determine if anyone had broken the law and we are pretty careful about that, obviously, from both sides'.

'Compliance people are looking at that pretty closely so I couldn't comment about that until we had all the evidence and consider the different options.

'If it's something illegal we would take action on that and if it needed consent they would still have to obtain consent for the work they've done. Continued use would depend on what's been done,' Wheeler said.

He said the Department of Conservation was also involved, along with other parties related to the protection of coastline values, and they had some jurisdiction on the coastline vegetation and wildlife but were more involved with mammals like seals.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that an appeal of an MDC decision declining an application to form a 1.5-kilometre road from Ward Beach to the Chancet Rocks was rejected. That decision is still pending.