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Nationalising Land Threatens Merinos And Mohua

25 October 2007

HIGH COUNTRY ACCORD
MEDIA RELEASE
IMMEDIATE

Nationalising Land Threatens Merinos And Mohua

High country farmers say nationalising land to create high country parks will hurt New Zealand's valuable merino industry, and will spread DoC's scarce resources even wider to the detriment of key threatened species.

The 59,500 hectare Hakatere Park being opened in Canterbury tomorrow is one of around 20 proposed through the South Island's high country, which will eventually see up to 1.3 million hectares of land being nationalised by the government and added to the conservation estate.

High Country Accord chair Ben Todhunter says the transfer of land to Crown ownership has some costs that the Crown needs to be honest about.

"It costs to buy the land, it costs to manage the land and it costs in the lost production from the land."

He says the creation of a large network of high country parks threatens New Zealand's iconic merino wool industry.

A report Lincoln University prepared for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in 2004 concluded that if the tenure process continued as it was, then up to 30 percent of the merino sheep in the high country could be lost.

"Much of the land traditionally grazed by merino wethers will no longer be available for productive use.

"Just last Friday, the Minister of Agriculture, Jim Anderton, presented a special award to the Italian fashion house, Loro Piana, for its contribution to making New Zealand merino wool such a high value product. But when almost one third of our merino sheep are gone, where will top fashion houses like Loro Piana get their 'New Zealand' merino wool from? Australia?"

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Land from iconic stations like Double Hill and Clent Hills, which has gone into the making of the Hakatere Conservation Park, is no longer available for grazing merino wethers. On those two stations alone on current prices that's a potential annual income of $250,000 lost from the local economy.

"DoC's resources are also severely stretched looking after the land it already has. Its last annual report makes sobering reading. For instance, the mohua (yellowhead), a small, endangered bird found only in South Island forests, has disappeared from 97 percent of its range. Yet, DoC's current resources only allow it to protect the mohua in less than 11 percent of its current range.

"The situation with the kiwi is just as bad when you compare the areas where DoC works to protect kiwi and their total range. Active protective management for Kiwi covers just a fraction of their current range on DOC land.

"As DoC admits in its annual report, its resources cannot halt or slow the decline of threatened species on all the land it administers. Yet, despite it not being able to cope now, the government is making it responsible for even more land."

[Ends]


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