Forest & Bird calls for tenure review halt to protect native plants and animals

Forest & Bird is calling for a halt to farm tenure review in the Mackenzie Basin, after a Landcare Research report said intensive farming in the past decade has wiped out more native plants than at any time since Europeans arrived.

Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Nicola Vallance says freeholding high-country farms until now owned by the Crown is a short cut to intensive land use and the loss of more native plants and animals.

“2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, yet our scientists have shown that when it comes to intensive farming, sadly, New Zealand’s internationally recognised unique native wildlife take a back seat,” she says.

The Government is currently assessing five properties in the Mackenzie Basin for tenure review. An Official Information Act request last month revealed the Government plans to freehold 31,000 hectares of Crown land in the Mackenzie Basin.

Thousands of hectares have already been freeholded and some of these are now driving the irrigation and dairying rush in the Mackenzie Country.

“Forest & Bird is calling for a halt to these tenure reviews until the Government has a clear national vision or strategy for how to best protect our Mackenzie heritage,” Nicola Vallance says.

“The Mackenzie Country is going through the most rapid rate of development and landscape change of any New Zealand region in modern times. Since 1990, more
tussock grassland in the Mackenzie has been converted to exotic pasture and crops than in the previous 150 years of European settlement.”

Landcare Research identified the Canterbury Plains as suffering the highest level of biodiversity loss. Dairy stock numbers increased 390 per cent in Canterbury between 1990 and 2003. The iconic Mackenzie Basin is next on the agenda.

“Our big-sky country, the backdrop to The Lord of the Rings that is known for its sweeping golden tussocklands and high-country heritage, is in danger of being turned into a cow paddock,” Nicola Vallance says.

Hard facts
• Dairy farm conversions in Canterbury have increased by more than 130 per cent since 1995.
• Dairy farming in New Zealand places our unique wildlife at risk through pollution of waterways, conversion of fragile, high-country habitats into intensively farmed land and other development.
• The Mackenzie Basin is home to 40 per cent of New Zealand’s rare and threatened plant species.
• Tourism in the Mackenzie is worth $4 billion a year.
• The Mackenzie Basin has the lowest rainfall of any region in New Zealand.
• Large-scale irrigation has enabled intensive dairy farming on the fragile dry landscapes of the Mackenzie.

ENDS

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