Help our group of well intentioned but poorly funded 'Coasters take the fight to the Green Party and Forest and Bird. This is YOUR future.
Auckland
There is a battle looming over the future of current assigned stewardship land in New Zealand. The Department of Conservation effectively inherited vast estates from the closure of Lands and Survey, Department of Forestry etc when the State Owned Enterprises Act came into force in the late 1980's. This land, some of it has low conservation value - other parts are extremely high value, was to have been re-assessed within 3 years. This review has never happened.
With the announcement "from the throne" by the Labour led coalition government that there would be "No new mining on conservation land" and the Green Minister of Conservation's (Eugenie Sage) announcement that "consultation" would take place in September over the future of stewardship land - there is genuine concern that the current stewardship land is ALL about to transferred permanently into the DOC estate and all commercial activity on DOC lands will be stopped.
The people of the West Coast (where 84% of the region is DOC estate) need to play a major part in deciding what the future of this land is. We agree that large parts of the estate need to be permanently protected - but also seek easier access to low value land for continued best practise commercial activity. It is only with access to this land that this region has survived so far - without it we are doomed.
This is a MAJOR battle.
We are up against both the Green Party and Forest and Bird. These are long established, well funded and experience campaigners.
We're amatuers - and we need your help.... Every little bit counts: this is YOUR future.
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