4. Mining and conservation

Fact: Conservation and mining are not incompatible. According to the Department of Conservation, there are 85 mines on public conservation land (including the foreshore and seabed), including a small-scale gold mine on Schedule 4 land in the Coromandel, authorised before Schedule 4 was enacted. Omitting the foreshore and seabed leaves 57 mines (ref. 7). Access arrangements for mining from the Minister of Conservation are often accompanied by payments to DOC for conservation projects. They include blue duck and kaka recovery work, pest control in conservation areas, and acquisition of high-value private land for conservation. This conservation work is done over a much larger area than the area in mining and related infrastructure, for example, roads, pipes. More than 90% of access arrangement applications for mining on public conservation land have been approved since the Crown Minerals Act was passed in 1991 (ref 8).

Straterra's view: The goal of many mining companies is to produce a positive net effect on the New Zealand environment, on an annual and ongoing basis, anywhere in New Zealand, and particularly so on public conservation land.

Ref 7:Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, “Making difficult decisions: mining the conservation estate”. September 2010: http://www.pce.parliament.nz/assets/Uploads/Reports/pdf/Mining-Report-FINAL.pdf

Ref 8: Ibid.