Mount Aspiring excision reversed

Forest and Bird, Issue 268, 1 May 1993, Page 3

Mount Aspiring excision reversed

Ian Close

IT SHOWS YOU always need to keep on the lookout. In a backroom deal back in 1975, the government agreed to remove a small block from the Mount Aspiring National Park and lease it to the adjacent runholder. The purported reason for removing the 74 hectares of mountain beech forest was to "rationalise" the park’s boundaries due to survey difficulties. The removal of any land from a national park, however,

has to be approved by Parliament. Luckily, sometimes, the bureaucratic wheels grind slow. The proposed excision was first approved by the local parks board and, in 1988, by the old National Parks and Reserves Authority. But the enabling legislation had still not passed through Parliament at the beginning of this year when the change was picked up by Forest and Bird Otago field officer Sue Maturin. The area of bush in question is adjacent to the drive to the beginning of the Routeburn Track and an important part of

the visual landscape seen from the Dart River. There is little other bush remaining on the river and the adjacent faces along Lake Wakatipu. DoC, unfortunately, saw the deal as a fait accompli and did not seem particularly worried by the proposed excision. But Forest and Bird discovered that the adjacent run benefiting from the intended change had been bought by the government last year as part of the settlement bank for the Ngai Tahu land claim. With all the land in question now Crown land, any rationale for a bound-

ary change had disappeared. Sue and head officer researcher Barry Weeber lobbied Conservation and Environment Ministers Marshall and Storey and the offending clause was quietly dropped before the enabling legislation passed through Parliament in March. The area rescued might only have been a small part of a large park, but it shows that the integrity of even national parks, the pinnacle of our reserve system, is not always as safe from interference as we sometimes assume.