Wednesday, March 20, 2024

New policy might limit farming

Neal Wallace
Farmers fear new biodiversity policy could force councils to make them restore areas of indigenous flora and fauna on their land.
A new Ministry for the Environment report lays out the options for setting up a voluntary biodiversity credit scheme.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Government has released its proposed draft National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity, which leans heavily on councils to identify, monitor and manage areas with significant indigenous biodiversity.

Within five years councils will have to identify and map significant natural areas using standard national criteria, manage any adverse effects on those areas and survey native wildlife in and outside the areas to determine if they are threatened or affected by land use activities.

But Federated Farmers fears the new policy could restrict farmers land use, limit practices, broaden activities needing resource consent and require restoration of indigenous biodiversity.

“Our concerns are the goal posts have shifted to where restoration initiatives could now be considered part of councils’ legal obligation to maintain biodiversity,” an assessment of the policy by the federation warned.

“The implications for farmers are significant. 

“This potentially gives legal grounds for imposing requirements on farmers to actively manage pests and weeds, fence off SNAs and other costly restoration actions, perhaps even retire land altogether.”

It is also concerned the criteria for determining the areas will capture all indigenous vegetation.

“As noted in the discussion document, SNAs represent the most iconic and highly valued indigenous biodiversity. The criteria should not capture wider than that.”

Local Government NZ president Dave Cull says the Government has consulted councils in developing the national policy statement, with elements tested by councils.

 “We know that there’s often a difference between theory and practice, and between proposed cost and actual cost.

“All too often local government and communities get lumped with undue costs, so we’re hopeful that the council testing and wider consultation provides central government with a good sense of what will work, and what support will be needed to make it work.” 

The federation says restoration initiatives should be non-regulatory but support landowners and community groups with conservation initiatives as has proven successful in Hawke’s Bay and Taranaki.

The proposed policy raises the threshold farming activities must meet to be permitted in the areas by including disruption of ecosystems or reducing the population of threatened species.

“This will be a very high bar to cross to be able to establish new activities in SNAs.”

New criteria to manage any adverse effects from new farming activities on the areas include avoidance where possible then mitigate, offset or compensate.

“Ecological advice is that in practice very few new activities would be able to manage adverse effects within an SNA based on the hierarchy, which means new activities are unlikely to be allowed unless effects are minor,” the federation warns.

Existing activities in an area can continue provided they remain the same in character, intensity and scale but landowners face issues if they want to cultivate or clear scrub that has not been touched recently.

“Proving when you last cultivated or cleared scrub in an area of your farm is hard to do when most farmers don’t document these activities.”

Resource consent will be required to clear indigenous vegetation regrowth considered significant and where adverse effects from proposed clearance are greater in character, scale or intensity than what occurred previously.

Farmers who have nesting indigenous wildlife on their land might need a plan to ensure the nests are not destroyed or damaged by farming activities.

Resource consent will be required if a landowner cannot provide adequate information to demonstrate a proposed clearance is part of a regular cycle or it is an area of at risk species or alluvial land forms that have not been cultivated, for example the South Island’s Mackenzie Basin.

If adopted, the proposals will require councils to promote biodiversity restoration to a minimum 10% in urban and peri-urban areas, potentially creating issues for lifestyle block owners.

The same criteria apply to rural areas where there is less than 10% indigenous vegetation cover but there is no detail on what those targets are or the timeframes to achieve them.

“This recognises that restoring 10% of rural areas would likely be cost-prohibitive and in many cases unachievable,” the federation says.

Priorities for restoration are wetlands, degraded SNAs, areas providing connectivity or buffering for ecosystems and biodiversity protection.

The proposals include the creation of plantation forest biodiversity areas for plantation forests, which can be habitat for kiwi and falcons.

These areas have their own management requirements to maintain long-term populations of indigenous fauna and control the adverse effects on native flora.

The federation says the proposed national policy statement will impose significant costs on councils and landowners but details on the extent are light.

“The impact on rates for councils with large geographic areas and small ratepayer bases is a particular concern for Federated Farmers.”

Submissions close at 5pm March 14.

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