Overspending in Perspective

Forest and Bird, Volume 19, Issue 3, 1 August 1988, Unnumbered Page

Overspending in Perspective

Dr

President:

Alan Mark,

Consider this: the cost of one of New Zealand's proposed frigates will be at least three times greater than the total budget of the Conservation Department this year. Taxpayers will have to pay possibly $200 million for the controversial satellite base at Waihopai, twice DoC’s budget. And Treasury, which is clobbering DoC with penalty interest rates on its overspending in its first year (more than $1 million in interest payments), has itself a less than sparkling record when it comes to budget deficits. In 1987 a somewhat red-faced Treasury had to admit that it had overspent its budget by $3 million about the same total as DoC’s overspending last year but proportionally four times as bad. The Conservation Department employs about 2000 people, looks after a third of New Zealand's land area and much of our coastal marine resources out to the 12-mile limit, and has a conservation advocacy role as well. For this it has a budget of $100 million. These figures are worthwhile keeping in mind when discussing DoC overspending. While we must rightly criticise inappropriate DOC activities, we must also be wary of falling into the trap of aligning ourselves with Treasury and selling our internationally significant and irreplaceable natural heritage short. Make no mistake about it, Roger Douglas and Treasury want to cut Government spending across the board, and conservation could be seen as easy prey. That is why Forest & Bird was careful recently to attack only what it considered an inappropriate DoC activity: releasing deer into the wild. The motives behind the programme appear to be three-fold: first, the staff involved are former Forest Service employees whose experience has been in working with deer, thar and chamois; secondly these staff (and some other New Zealanders) believe it is time conservationists became ‘‘mature"’ about the question of introduced wild mammals and accepted them as a part of our natural heritage. This, despite the fact that our vulnerable native plants continue to be devastated by these selective browsers. Thirdly, Treasury's demand that DoC be 20 percent self-funding by 1990 is driving some staff towards dreaming up income generators like deer breeding schemes. Fortunately, in Conservation Minister Helen Clark we have someone who is prepared to make the hard decisions. She has assured us from now on deer ‘‘enrichment"’ schemes are non-starters and instead wild animal control supposedly one of DoC’s high priorities — will be concentrated on. Our deer protest was a timely one: we have clear evidence for a resurgence of native vegetation since intensive helicopter hunting began in the late 1960s; just as clearly there has been an increase in deer numbers since the Government changed livestock taxation rules in 1984. When the helicopter hunting industry was at its peak in the mid-1970s, 16 helicopters were flying out of Taupo. Today there is one. Add goats, wallabies and possums to the list of problem noxious animals, and one senses we are sitting on potential population explosions. In the South Island high country between Arthur's Pass and the Haast Pass, the Himalayan mountain goat, the thar, has also been increasing in numbers, from an estimated 2000 in 1984 when commercial hunting was first banned to some 4000 today. Through all this time recreational hunting an ineffective control method continued. There are several solutions to the problem: the bans on commercial helicopter hunting in Recreational Hunting Areas, some Forest Parks and part of Tongariro and Urewera National Parks should be lifted; the commercial hunting ban on thar should be removed immediately; no hunting fee should be imposed on deerstalkers shooting on DoC land; DoC should waive fees and bounties imposed on commercial helicopter hunters and should start to consider subsidised hunting. It seems to me that, if we as taxpayers are prepared to pay for frigates worth three times the Conservation Department's budget, we should also be prepared to pay for the defence of our unique natural heritage.

Contributors to Forest & Bird may express their opinions on contentious issues. Those opinions are not necessarily the prevailing opinion of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society.