Te Puke takes on the miners

Forest and Bird, Issue 267, 1 February 1993, Page 8

Te Puke takes on the miners

IT WAS a daunting case for the Te Puke branch. In the face of ministerial approval they went to the Planning Tribunal to oppose a mining licence for a huge road metal quarry in DoC-owned forest. For decades a small quarry had been worked intermittently on gorse-covered Crown land in the hills behind Te Puke. Then the operator applied for a further licence, to penetrate the beautiful Oropi forest on DoC stewardship land and extract up to 50,000 tonnes of road metal yearly. In 1990, against the advice of the regional DoC office and the department’s policy guidelines, the then Conservation Minister, Philip Woollaston, gave his consent. Our members built up a meticulous case to defend the forest and streams. They surveyed and described the forest and researched wildlife and geological reports. They explored the economies of roading in the Bay of Plenty and, in the deregulated market, found road metal both cheap and plentiful. They set out the difficulties of quarrying in steep, high-rainfall country,

and the catastrophic effects likely on the network of streams and the native fish. Searchers even turned up a rare Hochstetter’s frog, previously unrecorded from the southern part of the Kaimai Range, and brown kiwi were found in night time surveys. The case was presented by the branch chair Malcolm Gray, committee members and

the society’s regional field officer Basil Graeme. Their efforts met with only limited success. In November the licence was granted, although with both reduced term and area, and with stringent and restrictive conditions. This is not an isolated case but a typical scenario for conservationists opposing mining applications. To the govern-

ment, DoC stewardship land is obviously the Cinderella of the conservation estate. Under the new Crown Minerals Act, however, DoC now has greater power to refuse access for mining on conservation land. All it needs is the fortitude to follow its own policy guidelines, and a Minister who is prepared to stand up to the mining industry.