Minister’s Swamp Kauri Announcement Stuck in Quagmire

Minister’s Swamp Kauri Announcement Stuck in Quagmire

Yesterday’s announcements by MPI Minister Nathan Guy prove how little control the authorities have been having over the swamp kauri gold rush say conservation groups but the upshot is continued wetland destruction and less local jobs.

Fiona Furrell, Chairperson of the Northland Environmental Protection Society said that Nathan Guy’s announcement is a backhanded admission that the authorities have failed on many counts and is poorly thought out.

“The Minister could have used the opportunity to be a real star and clamp down on fake finished products and insist on stronger protection of rare native species and wetlands. Instead he announced that rough sawn slabs can still be exported as tabletops. If this is the lame and incorrect way the Minister interprets what a finished product is, then we need a law change to be explicit. That means ending the export of fake ‘temple poles’, dodgy ‘Maori carvings’, ‘slabs’ and ‘stumplogs’ as finished products”, she said.

Northland has the weakest regional wetland protection rules in the country and the Northland Regional Council has been rubberstamping wetlands for destruction that would otherwise be protected in other parts of New Zealand. Once the pans beneath these wetlands are broken they cannot be successfully repaired.

“Action from the NRC is again lacking and looks to continue to allow threatened mudfish, rare geckoes, endangered plants and critically endangered native wetland birds to be wiped out” said Dean Baigent-Mercer, Far North Conservation Advocate for Forest & Bird.

Swamp kauri is one of the most expensive timbers in the world and found almost exclusively under Northland wetlands. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of swamp kauri has been moved out of Northland in the past few years yet the Minister said it is only worth $25 million to the region.

“An independent inquiry by the Auditor General into MPI and Customs is now more necessary than ever,” said Mr Baigent-Mercer.

None of this addresses the problem of swamp kauri turning up overseas that has not been notified. Full inspection of all exports is needed so unnotified or illegally smuggled swamp kauri cannot occur.

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