The strange case of Colin Boyd

Forest and Bird, Issue 281, 1 August 1996, Page 2

The strange case of Colin Boyd

Keith Chapple

N RECENT YEARS New Zealanders have started to wake up to the enormity of the ecological damage we have inflicted on this country. This has led to a shift of values, a recognition of the need to protect what is left of our indigenous animals and habitats. The shift has articulated itself in a number of ways. A Department of Conservation was formed in 1987 with a statutory duty to "advocate the conservation of natural and historic resources’. Planning laws that previously favoured development, changed towards sustainable management when the Resource Management Act was passed in 1991. Public relations, the marketing of individual products and even our sense of national identity began to focus on a clean green mantle. "Clean and green" is now on every political agenda and the publicity material of most New Zealand export companies. Then, like a feudal Black Knight of old, comes Colin Boyd, a Taranaki farmer who took a case against what he termed the "green collar criminals" who wanted to stop him from clearing 150 hectares of forest bordering Egmont National Park. Boyd bought his property in 1994 with the intention of developing it as a dairy farm. However, there appeared to be an insuperable obstacle to this end: the native vegetation on his block was protected under the New Plymouth District Council’s transitional district plan. The block had been identified as a recommended area for protection in 1986 for its important conservation values. Surveys by DoC scientists since then had only enhanced its importance for nature conservation. The forest contained nationally threatened plants and native fish, and significant areas of maire swamp that elsewhere throughout Taranaki had been extensively drained for farmland. All in all DoC considered it "a rare type of forest ecosystem ... and one of New Zealand’s more important remaining forest areas". Mr Boyd defiantly began to clear his property — "as long as I have the key to the farm gate," he said, "it will be developed into a dairy farm" — and took his case to the Planning Tribunal. Last April,

Judge Treadwell (of fast ferries fame) held that the district council had set in place a protection mechanism that was technically illegal under the now-defunct Town and Country Planning Act. Boyd was free to continue to clear the forest on his property and has said he is determined to do so. Boyd is no mere struggling dairy farmer set upon by bureaucrats wanting to stop him earning a livelihood. He has made a lot of money over the years building up a successful machinery contracting business. But he appears to belong to an anachronistic breed of people who still call themselves pioneers and who, in the name

of progress concentrate on destroying nature itself. His actions typify the now discredited concept that property rights are absolute, with the law not admitting the smallest infringement of them, even when the good of the community as a whole is at stake. He openly calls the forest on his property "shit". He concludes that the forest’s destruction and its conversion to grass will be "a monument to what I have done". I’m sure he’s right. It will be a monument, but not the type he thinks. A monument should have wide public acceptance as representing something of cultural significance or enduring social, artistic or academic value. How does the Boyd dairy farm development stack up? Is the development significant? No. There are already thousands of dairy farms in Taranaki producing hundreds of millions of litres of milk. Production volumes have largely reached their limits with the land capable of dairy farming beginning to come under stress from the number of animals on the land. Does the Boyd development enhance New Zealand’s reputation in any way? No. The giant Kiwi Dairy Company exports virtually all its production and like other dairy companies relies heavily on "green marketing". Surely it wouldn’t want the

world market to think it is an industry expanding on the back of the destruction of New Zealand’s biodiversity. Today with over 500 threatened species of plants and animals in this country, Boyd’s destructive actions are particularly reprehensible. Most development of this type occurred long before people were fully aware of the ecological consequences and at a time when a fledgling dairy industry was just beginning. The Boyd case highlights the inadequacies of the transitional arrangements of the Resource Management Act and the need for legally enforceable rules to control undesirable activities. It is five years since that Act came into force, but much of the country’s planning regime is still governed by out-of-date schemes and philosophies developed under repealed and discredited legislation. Indigenous biodiversity is being lost as a result. Land owners, but particularly companies that benefit from the land’s production, need to promote the concept of duality of ownership so admirably described by Joseph Sax: "Property owners must bear affirmative obligations to use their property in the service of a habitable planet. They are all crew members on a common spaceship that is called planet earth. This is the affirmative duty of proprietorship". The concept is not new. Over a century ago Victor Hugo said, "There are two elements in an edifice, its usefulness and its beauty. Its usefulness belongs to the proprietor, its beauty to the world. Thus for an owner to destroy it is to exceed his rights of ownership". The concept is well established in other industries such as forestry. If all the major forest companies in New Zealand can voluntarily agree, as they have done, to stop clearing forests for plantations, surely the dairy industry can act in a similarly responsible manner. As it is, the Boyd saga is giving dairying, and farming generally, a bad name.

"If all the major forest companies in New Zealand can voluntarily agree, as they have done, to stop clearing forests for plantations, surely the dairy industry can act in a similarly responsible manner."

KEITH CHAPPLE is the deputy president of Forest and Bird.