We need to give greater protection to the public assets of heritage value.
Read MoreDepartment of Conservation
It's really too nice of a Sunday morning to be outraged
Sir Geoffrey Palmer fears that the Government's response to a Supreme Court ruling may be "deeply offensive to the rule of law and a constitutional outrage." At the risk of challenging a legal Goliath, I must demur.
Read MoreConservation lands: resources, naturally?
All of the government’s signs are pointing the same way: relocating conservation and the Department of Conservation within the “natural resources” sector, the better to “streamline and simplify” its activities
Read MoreAnother coal hole, another snail fail
Are national parks the things we have when we can’t find anything else to do with them? The Denniston mining proposal is like the Schedule 4 mining proposal, with bonus snails
Read MoreSelling Tane short, on conservation lands
Our native forests and the creatures that live in them are in retreat, says the PCE; commerce is a lesser evil than rats, stoats and possums. Barbeque sacred cows, says DOC. Just uphold the law, says Green MP Kevin Hague
Read MoreCrystal Valley, and the conservation state
In 2004, the Nature Heritage Fund funded DOC’s Crystal Valley purchase, because of its outstanding conservation values. Last week DOC agreed to give part of the Valley, freehold, to Porter Heights Ski Field, to build an alpine lodge. What’s changed?
Read MoreAl Morrison’s conser-vision
DOC’s Director-General has a new ‘bluegreen’ conservation vision: follow the money to business partnership, because the country’s broke, and along the way further downsize his own little threadbare empire. What kind of Chief Executive is this?
Read MoreThe land that time forgot, and govt economics 101
Forest & Bird delivers a lesson in economical resource use — simplifying and streamlining, if you will — that doesn’t involve balancing the environment and the economy; and a reminder of the conservation job, put on ice for a quarter century
Read MoreOIA uncovers 2nd quango, trying to evade the Act
DOC papers released to me, under the OIA, show Meridian deleting key email to pre-empt its release, and slowing down DOC decision-making
Read MoreGrass stains on the Mackenzie, part II: tenure review
In which policy makers try to grow the economic cake, but end up eating it instead, leaving us with some little brown crumbs …
Read MoreGrass stains on the Mackenzie, part I
Intensive farming development of the Mackenzie district is a failure of law and policy, and ecological disaster on a colonial scale
Read MoreKate Wilkinson: Conservation’s lame blue duck?
Notes from Kate Wilkinson’s recent talk to a Christchurch tramping club raise real questions about the job she is doing as conservation minister
Read MoreJohn Key’s broken promise, on National’s parks
Key promised no state assets would be sold or partly sold in the first term of his government. But that’s in effect what’s happening, to our biggest state asset of them all
Read MoreChrist's College 1 - Conservation nil
Conservation tends to suffer under National governments, and this year's budget was true to form. Meanwhile, some private schools may be saved from extinction
Read More