A Critical Year for the High Country

Forest and Bird, Issue 311, 1 February 2004, Page 2

A Critical Year for the High Country

Dr

National President

GERRY McSWEENEY,

Lake Heron region, a magnificent mountain-encircled basin between the Rakaia and Rangitata rivers, in inland midCanterbury. To me, as a young doctoral student researching the impact of development, the horizons seemed endless. The basin was a world of rolling tawny tussock, glacial lakes, matagouri shrublands and dusty gravel roads stretching towards the snow-capped peaks. I spent the next three years visiting and living in the basin and was consequently not surprised when Mt Sunday, at the western end of the region, was chosen as Edoras in the film of Lord of the Rings. Protection of this outstanding landscape, its wetlands and wildlife, has been a central issue for our Ashburton branch. (See Forest e& Bird, August 2002.) Threats not only come from agricultural development but also from schemes to dam and channel the rivers within the basin to feed the water demands of the Canterbury Plains. When I returned to the Lake Heron Basin recently, guided by six of the local runholders, I discovered a land transformed. In 26 years, agricultural development has recreated the green landscape of the Canterbury Plains across much of the Basin. In many places the wetlands have disappeared, the streams are channelled and the landscape closely fenced. The result has been achieved through the hard work and investment of the farmers, all of whom are local New Zealanders. Most of the runholders farm under pastoral leases from the Crown, a system now under review. These runholders are being encouraged to freehold the productive valley pastures and convey the fragile higher slopes and wild areas to the Crown for protection. The farmers are all keen to extend their agricultural development but they love the Basin and also want to preserve some of the wild landscape and wetlands and keep out invading pine trees and weeds. I: is 25 years since I first discovered the

To do this they want a partnership with conservation and with the Government. Forest and Bird’s challenge is to work with the Government and with pastoral leaseholders to make sure that the wild and natural landscapes and the biodiversity of the high country are recognised and legally protected. We will work with everyone who shares that goal. The future of pastoral-lease high country is the biggest nature conservation issue facing Forest and Bird over the next year. We want tenure review to give much greater emphasis to achieving biodiversity and landscape protection as well as legally safeguarding recreational opportunities and access. Just before Christmas the Prime Minister, Rt Hon Helen Clark, announced that from January 2005 the Department of Conservation is to take over from Landcorp the management of the 186,000 hectare Molesworth Station in southern Marlborough. This is a major step towards the creation of a Molesworth Park and recognises the huge public recreation interest in this wild and natural landscape. Some of eastern Molesworth has also been identified by Forest and Bird for the proposed Kaikoura Ranges National Park. Molesworth has a tremendous range of natural ecosystems and distinctive and rare native plants and animals. Although cattle grazing will continue on some parts of Molesworth, cattle should now be removed from those large areas of the property that have been grazed for more than 10 years despite being designated as ‘protected natural areas’. In further exciting news for high country nature protection, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Conservation have also just announced that Birchwood Station in North Otago has been bought by the Government, through its Nature Heritage Fund, creating a 26,000-hectare reserve. This large pastoral lease encompasses most of the headwaters of the ‘wild and scenic’ Ahuriri River, a major

tributary of the Waitaki River. It is fantastic news for wetland protection, nature conservation, anglers and walkers. Major progress is now being achieved creating public reserves in the high country and the Government’s actions on this deserve our full support. Forest and Bird welcomes the Government’s recent policy commitment to create an extensive network of parks and reserves throughout the high country. Our generation’s legacy should be a network of high-country parks stretching from Marlborough’s Kaikoura Ranges and Molesworth, south through Canterbury and Otago, to the Mavora Lakes and Eyre Mountains of Southland. t its November meeting at Lake Karapiro, Society councillors from hroughout New Zealand also welcomed the Government’s decision to review the Overseas Investment Act. The review aims to provide greater safeguards for what the Government calls ‘iconic properties’ particularly on the coast and in the high country. There is mounting evidence that recent foreign sales in the high country and on the seacoast have substantially raised prices in these areas. The consequences of this are that conservation dollars simply cannot compete against the foreign purchaser. Also the prices they pay can only be economically warranted if there is a dramatic change of land use from rural to lifestyle subdivisions, placing greater pressure on biodiversity and landscapes in the high country and on the coast. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Conservation have both been passionate advocates of nature and landscape protection. Not all their colleagues share their views so let your elected representatives know what you think.