The Mackenzie Basin farmer and head of Federated Farmers South Island High Country committee says it’s end has been signalled for some time and most lessees wanting to go through the process will have done it by now.
Lands Minister Eugenie Sage announced the end of the process introduced in 1998, where pastoral lessees can negotiate to freehold areas of their lease in return for surrendering land of conservation value.
Sage, a former Royal Forest and Bird Society field officer and long-time critic of tenure review, said it resulted in farming intensification and loss of landscape values and biodiversity.
The process has similarly been criticised by environmentalists but Williamson said there were benefits in that it enabled the creation of 10 conservation parks, it allowed properties to become economic and more productive and that benefited local communities.
The impact of tenure review differed between regions and criticism that it resulted in intensive, irrigated farming was too generalised, he said.
The development of dairying in the Mackenzie Basin has become a flash point but through tenure review the Conservation Department now manages 60% of the basin.
Tenure review is effectively the negotiated surrender by lessees of their rights to use an area of leased land. Of the 303 lessees in 1998, 125 have completed tenure review and a 40 will continue the process. The balance will remain lessees.
It has meant 345,940ha has been freeholded and 302,554ha retired to the Crown.
Williamson says whether a lessee entered tenure review depended on the balance of the property and what they had to trade.
Responsibility for weed and pest control on that land has shifted from the lessees to DOC and Williamson said that has proved challenging in some areas for the department.
A Land Information review of Crown Pastoral Regulatory by Crown Property deputy chief executive Jerome Sheppard recommends strengthening the monitoring, compliance and enforcement of Crown pastoral land.
It found tenure review was designed to allow the Crown to exit being a long-term landowner but it is no longer clear exactly what the Crown’s goals are.
Sage is yet to announce further reforms to pastoral leases.
A pastoral lease gave lessees a 33-year perpetually renewable lease with the right to exclusive occupation, right to reside, right to graze the land for pastoral farming and, with consent, to disturb the soil or to change land use.
