PARTNERSHIP for PRODUCTION and PROTECTION

Forest and Bird, Volume 17, Issue 2, 1 May 1986, Page 22

PARTNERSHIP for PRODUCTION and PROTECTION

Gerry

McSweeney

Conservation director

reports on a successful

visit to the Mackenzie Basin where scientists and high country farmers managed to find common ground. he first real test for the Protected Natural Areas Programme (PNA) took place earlier this year in the high country of the Mackenzie Basin. Happily the programme passed with flying colours. The test was not whether representative examples of New Zealand’s natural landscape could be identified — this had alredy been done through surveys in at least eight parts of the country — but rather whether the value of identified areas could be conveyed to the landowners and lessees and mechanisms then had to be developed to integrate protection with other productive uses of the land.

PNAs cover only six percent

The % million-hectare Mackenzie Basin was first surveyed for representative reserves over the 1983-84 summer. A report produced in late 1984 identified about six percent of the Basin as priority natural areas, deserving further evaluation and appropriate protection. In February 1986, the Government's scientific committee for protected areas (PASAC) visited the region to evaluate priority natural areas. It was to be a most unusual visit for the committee, which previously had been accustomed to evaluating proposals in uninhabited state forests. Lands and Survey wanted the committee to understand the implications of PNA proposals for high country farming. As Canterbury’s Land Commissioner Laurie Kenworthy told PASAC's first public meeting in the Mackenzie basin: "If tussock grassland reserves are to have a long term future, we need the understanding and long term support of lessees and landowners. Prospects for a successful visit seemed poor. The whole future of high country public lands is undecided with continuing debate on whether to place them into a narrow commercial corporation or into a neutral stewardship division of the Depart ment of Conservation. Rabbit problems also confuse the issue. Immediately prior to the PASAC tour, the Mackenzie branch of Federated Farmers had voted to stop any further co-operation with the representative reserve programme until Govern. ment assisted them by introducing myxomatosis. However what took place over the week-long tour by the PASAC committee

was a shift from public posturing, and heated debate, to an encouraging example of dialogue in the finest New Zealand tradition. By the end of the week most people emerged with the realisation that multiple use of the high country is possible, involving a partnership in both preservation and production between the public, the government and high country runholders.

Pests number one enemy

High country runholders have many fears. Partly cushioned by high fine wool prices and fast developing tourism alternatives on their properties, they voice less of the economic despair of the smaller lowland farmers, but more their opposition to anything which might reduce pastoral production. Many see pests as their number one enemy: both spiralling rabbit numbers and attendant control costs; and uncontrolled expansion of weeds such as the introduced flatweed Hieracium and the rosehipcovered sweet briar. For Alan Innes of Black Forest Station, Hieracium and rabbits seem to eclipse all other concerns. However other farmers are less worried. They see the rabbit problem as unimportant nationally but locally severe, demanding intense poisoning programmes and tighter stock management. They also believe that both briar and Hieracium an be controlled by stock management, pasture improvement and in some cases the controlled use of goats.

Michael Murchison, Chairman of the high country committee of Federated Farmers, told PASAC’s first public meeting that outside pressures for the surrender of eroded mountain ranges, for recreational use and for nature conservation are ‘‘the greatest threat to our future’. Since the 1960s Governments have subsidised lowland development by runhold-

ers in return for the retirement from grazing of pastoral leases on severely eroded mountain ranges. Initially started to prevent further erosion choking rivers downstream, retirement programmes have now broadened. They seek also to preserve the unique alpine vegetation of the high mountain lands from further grazing damage and to allow the vegetation to continue holding the soil mantle. Although runholders have been the major beneficiaries of these subsidised retirement programmes, lack of progress in recent years in achieving the voluntary retirement and surrender of the severely eroded mountainlands led government last year to adopt a new policy. This now requires the identification and compulsory surrender of such lands, subject to appropriate compensation. Runholders have been vocal in their opposition to the new policy. They dislike being reminded that their leases only give them right to the pasture not the soil and thus on the severely eroded public lands where little pasture remains they have little or no lease entitlement. The surrendered mountainlands are highly valued by trampers, climbers and hunters. Clearly too they have great scientific and conservation value. At lower altitudes, the runholders also fear outside interference. Many of them were caught up by the massive Waitaki hydro developments. More recently there has been considerable interest in preserving habitat for the rare black stilt, down to eleven breeding pairs and restricted to high country wetlands in the Mackenzie Basin.

New era of balanced land use

Traditionally, pastoral farming has ruled the roost in the high country. It is therefore easy to understand runholders worries about outsiders promoting recognition and protection of the multiple values of the high country. Nevertheless most of their runs are Crown land under pastoral lease, which require balanced use of the high country, even if in times past the administration of the leases has almost exclusively favoured farming. Former runholder and Land Settlement Board member Arthur Scaife told Mackenzie Basin runholders in February that programmes like the représentative reserve programme were always going to happen. ‘‘We high country people ourselves accelerated the PNA programme by seeking further freeholding. We also complained about proposals to increase our rentals and as a consequence got a comission of enquiry (the Clayton Commission) established which inevitably accelerated such things as the PNA programme." (Peppercorn rentals are paid for the 2.7 million hectares of high country pastoral leases — $131,000 in 1984-85 or 6 cents a hectare. Government policy is for these rentals to progressively increase to more realistic levels.) The scientific committee evaluating the Mackenzie PNA areas worked like Trojans. They spent up to ten hours a day and long into the night evaluating most priority natural areas in the northern Mackenzie

Basin. They were always accompanied by the runholder on the properties they visited. Despite earlier fears, what emerged during the week was an understanding and acceptance of the value of representative reserves. ‘‘I get a little less concerned as time goes by that we high country people have as much to worry about from the PNA programme as we first thought,"’ commented Arthur Scaife.

Even farmers’ fears allayed

Farmers’ fears were allayed by the realisation that for many of the PNAs, what was required was not a high fence and a "keep out’ notice. Rather the protected short tussock grassland would need to be extensively grazed. Although dominated by native plants, these grasslands have expanded because of human fires and animal grazing. This would need to continue to perpetuate the tussocks and prevent the eruption of introduced grasses and Hieracium. Although controlled extensive grazing would be required in the PNA areas, management agreements for such areas would have to preclude oversowing, cultivation and other development. Such activities are not a legal right of a pastoral lessee, rather they are a privilege for which the lessee must make specific application. This in part explains the willingness of Lands and Survey Deputy Director-General George Macmillan to bite the bullet on the runholders’ question whether lessees will be compensated when PNAs are established. ‘‘l accept without question, and so does the Land Settlement Board, that if a lessee is being asked to forgo some development opportunity that he is automatically entitled to undertake, he is entitled to compensation’’. He also emphasised that in general establishment of PNAs could only be by negotiation. As the runholders thawed to the concept of representative reserves, equally dramatic was the growing realisation amongst the scientists of PASAC of the impact of rabbits and weeds on the Mackenzie Basin. At the beginning of the week runhold-

ers’ spokesman Michael Murchison had assured PASACs first public meeting that, ‘‘Runholders are conservationists and generally accept that these are natural areas that may need protection." With virtually no reserves through the high country today and wetlands and tussockland eliminated over wide areas by pasture improvement programmes, the public could be justifiably sceptical about Michael Murchison’s statement. However during the week in the Mackenzie it became increasingly clear that if runholders understood the purpose of the PNA programme they were willing to co-operate in establishing representative reserves. ‘‘Fescue tussock has always been a special feature of Ben Ohau station — especially on the block beside the main road. We're keen for it to be left for the future’, says Simon Cameron, who with his wife Priscilla and his parents, farms the station near Twizel. Short tussock on river gravels was once the most extensive vegetation type in the Mackenzie. However today it has disappered from most of the basin through pasture improvement, hydro development and roads. The PNA survey team identified a 300 hectare short tussock area on Simon Cameron’s property. It is a spectacular example of short tussock, native broom and native herbs. When the PASAC team inspected the area it was alive with tussockland animals — tiger beetles, short horned grasshoppers, lizards, banded dotterel and pipit.

NZ’s finest short tussock area

If Ben Ohau’s tussock is to be maintained and Hieracium and introduced grasses kept

in check, extensive grazing by merino sheep must continue. On the adjacent Twizel airstrip where grazing is excluded, introduced browntop grass and Hieracium have swamped the short tussocks. Simon Cameron has very generously suggested that the PNA area could be expanded to include the whole short tussock covered paddock — some 1,500 hectares. This would undoubtedly be the finest protected short tussock area in the whole country and negotiations have now commenced to protect it through a covenant. This will allow for controlled grazing but preclude destruction of the short tussock by cultivation and oversowing, although the dry and stony land is clearly unsuited for such pasture improvement anyway. In exchange, the Government will clearly have to show its commitment to rabbit control in the short tussock reserve. Just as a partnership is needed to create representative reserves, another partnership is needed to tackle the rabbit problem. Myxomatosis introduction is not considered by a 1985 Environmental Impact Report to be the answer. There are problems in its effectiveness and speed of control, wide public opposition to its use, possible negative effects on our trading image and possible infection of domestic rabbits. Greater state assistance with rabbit poisoning in critical areas is one alternative. Another suggestion has been the commercialisation of the wild rabbit. Clearly the rabbit issue is a problem for all New Zealanders, not just high country runholders.

Simon and Priscilla Cameron are not alone in wanting to protect the natural character of the high country as part of, their farming operation. Further south, Don and Mary Lou Blue farm Ohau Downs Station. As well as fertile cultivated flats, this pastoral lease includes spectacular tussock and shrub covered glacial moraines studded with small lakes and wetlands.

‘We've been careful to look after the lakes and the tussock on the moraines — they make Ohau Downs special,"’ Don Blue told me recently. ‘‘However they also provide one of our few stock watering areas so stock must have access to them." About 500 hectares of moraines and lakes on the Blue’s pastoral lease were identified by the PNA survey as deserving protection. Unfortunately the PASAC team did not have time to visit the area in February. The type of negotiations described above are not going to be possible everywhere. Not all runholders will necessarily be as sympathetic. Nor will the scientists always be so flexible. There are tall tussock, shrubland and wetland associations where grazing must be excluded if the plants are to have a long term future. Attitudes will not change overnight. It will take time for runholders to recognise that the public interest in their leasehold lands need not be a threat. Rather it can be used as an ally against both rapacious rabbits and a Land Development Corporation greedy to maximise its rental income. Equally difficult for nature conservationists will be accepting that preserving some types of tussocklands may require continued grazing. The key to successful achievement of PNAs is clearly mutual understanding. Runholders, officials and nature conservationists all seem agreed on one thing — the momentum now behind the Mackenzie programme must not be now lost. #&