Protecting Natural Character of Coastal Landscape

Forest and Bird, Issue 310, 1 November 2003, Page 42

Protecting Natural Character of Coastal Landscape

AND

JIM LEWIS

ANN GRAEME

Increasingly, more New Zealanders are feeling a sense of loss as lonely hilltops are crowned with mansions and remote coastal shores cut up into ‘lifestyle’ blocks. They ask what is the worth of natural character? What is the value of landscapes empty of human development? Such questions are the nub of the campaign by the Okura Environment Group, a coalition of community groups including North Shore Forest and Bird. The group is seeking to protect the natural character of the Okura estuary, just north of the

city, which is already a marine reserve, and the sweeping views from its ridges of the Hauraki Gulf. The southern side of the estuary is degraded farmland in four-hectare titles, which were granted 20 years ago. In the first Environment Court battle in 1996, the local Environment Group stopped the farmland from being zoned residential. For the new rural zoning, the Council proposed subdividing to two hectares with remedial and mitigating requirements. The owner of half of the farmland put forward a plan for cluster housing at an average density of one house per hectare. The Environment Group

opposed both of these plans in a second Court case this year. Their case, presented by Di Lucas, a Forest and Bird member and nationally recognised landscape architect, sought to maintain the natural wild character surrounding the estuary shore. Part of the Court case expenses was met by a grant from the Ministry for the Environment. In his decision, Judge Bollard declined the cluster housing proposal and the Council plan for two-hectare subdivisions in the coastal zone. He accepted the case to protect the natural character of the coast as much as possible by imposing stringent conditions on potential buildings. These included discretionary conditions on single-storey buildings and a stipulation that they are built on sites deemed acceptable to all parties. The buildings must blend with the landscape and be only partially visible from the estuary shore where people walk. This result means those visitors to the Okura estuary, now and in the future, can enjoy a natural vista largely uninterrupted by human development. This is a happy precedent for the protection of other vulnerable landscapes.