Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Councils need ‘mini-DOC department’
The Marlborough District Council says there is a lack of clear resourcing and support measures from central Government as it looks to protect native, indigenous biodiversity under a new framework.
A draft for the proposed framework; the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity (NPS-IB) was released in June.
Under the proposal, every council would be required to map and publicly notify the location of all significant natural areas, or SNAs, in the district. SNAs are blocks of land that contain significant indigenous vegetation or significant habitats of indigenous fauna (birds and bats).
A report prepared for Marlborough’s planning and finance committee said the objective of the NPS-IB was to protect, maintain and restore indigenous biodiversity, and recognise tangata whenua as kaitiaki.
Council strategic planner Kim Lawson told the committee it was clear New Zealand’s biodiversity was in crisis, but said the council had highlighted several concerns with the draft.
The council did not think there was enough resourcing and support measures from central government to implement the proposal, and said a proposed fiveyear timeframe to identify SNAs was ‘‘unrealistic’’.
They thought the proposed NPS-IB shifted responsibility for highly mobile species from the Department of Conservation to the council.
Lawson said the Government had said there would be guidance documents and funding available – but this was yet to be ‘‘fleshed out’’.
‘‘Especially in an area like Marlborough, where we have quite high levels of indigenous biodiversity, the ability of financing, staffing and expertise to comply with the directions and time frames is quite onerous,’’ Lawson said.
‘‘We need further direction and guidance, and understanding of what funding will be available for councils and also landowners.’’
Without support from landowners, stakeholders, iwi, ‘‘it’s not going to be very effective’’.
Deputy mayor Nadine Taylor said there was ‘‘unfortunately a lot to be concerned about’’.
She said she was concerned that the framework transferred conservation and protection responsibilities that have sat with the Department of Conservation into the local authority – and therefore ratepayers.
‘‘We agree that the biodiversity is in crisis, and we all want to see the outcome that the Government’s seeking.
‘‘But what we’ve got is a government department [that] hasn’t mitigated that crisis and instead is actually proposing through this to hand the crisis to the ratepayers.’’
Taylor thought they needed to meet the local government minister, Nanaia Mahuta, to address this.
‘‘We’re inheriting 30 species for which we now have to undertake conservation and protection. We’re actually going to have to set up a mini-DOC department . . . and so are all other councils.’’
Council environmental policy manager Pere Hawes said the Government had tweaked an initial proposal from 2018 ‘‘around the edges’’ but in releasing the draft had not actually addressed ‘‘fundamental concerns’’ the council previously raised in 2020.
He said it would have implications on the council’s workflow and what it would be able to prioritise as the work would be ‘‘significant’’.
A decision on the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity is expected in December 2022.
The council had implemented the ‘‘Significant Natural Areas Project’’ since 2001, which was a voluntary programme to identify and map SNAs on private land. Council worked in partnership with landowners to then protect those areas.