National News> Media Releases

5th May 2007

ENDANGERED KAIPARA DUNE LAKES ENTITLED TO RMA PROTECTION

Fish & Game Auckland Waikato say the Rodney District Council is failing to protect the Kaipara Dune Lakes, with its decision not to implement controls on forestry fringing the lakes ensuring their depletion.

The Council’s new district plan restricts any new forestry in the Dune Lakes Zone because it acknowledges the adverse effects that pine trees have on the lakes’ water table, but rules out any new controls on existing forestry.

In recent decades more than half of the 33 dune lakes in the South Kaipara Head area have dried out and disappeared temporarily with most of the lakes returning to their previous water levels once the pine trees are harvested.

However, if pine trees are continually planted the lakes’ water levels continually fluctuate, drying out whenever the trees reach a certain size.

Fish & Game, who are mandated to protect game bird habitat, say the Rodney District has one of the lowest percentages of original freshwater wetland of any district in the country, and that these lakes provide habitat for many rare bird species, which, when they dry out, leave the birds either to die or disappear from the area.

Fish & Game’s submission to the Council’s new district plan argued for an independent and competentscientific agency to assess an appropriate set-back for pine trees from lake edges to protect the lakes’ water levels.

The Rodney District Council’s district plan restricted any new forestry in the Dune Lakes Zones because of the adverse effects that pine trees have on the water table.

However, it also stated thatall existing forestry is protected by ‘existing use rights’ under S10 of the Resource Management Act (RMA) 1991.

“Fish & Game are challenging this decision in an appeal to the Environment Court,” says John Dyer, Auckland Waikato Fish & Game Officer.

“We believe S10 (A) of the RMA requires forestry ownersto get a resource consent if their activities’ adverse effects impact ona lake or waterway has changed significantlyin character since the District Plan was notified.

“We were told a decade ago by Rodney District Council that the pine trees had no effect whatever on these lakes, however their recent decision to restrict any new forestry openly acknowledges such effects.”

Dyer says other rulings in the RMA actually require more protection for the lakes than currently exists in the district plan, and contravene the Council’s decision.

“The RMA requires that a lake can only be drained if such activity is provided for by a Rule in a Regional Plan, Fish & Game unaware of any such rule.

“Furthermore, the RMA declares in S.6 that lakes and wetlands are "Matters of National Importance", surelya district plan that fails to adequately protect so many of these 33 lakes from drying out is inconsistent with addressing this disaster as a matter of "National Importance."

Section 6 of the RMA specifically directs councils to protect significant natural habitats such as these and to preserve such lakes and their margins from inappropriate use and development, says Dyer.

“The RMA also makes it illegal to plant any exotic plant on or in a lake or lake bed, but foresters have actually mass-planted some of these Dune Lakes’ dried out lakebeds with pines even before they could recover.”

“There is nothing in the new District Plan which addresses this.”

Dyer says Fish & Game see precedence in support of their appeal in an Environment Court decision made in similar circumstances in the Tasman District, which did not support existing forestryrights to drain watersheds.

The Department of Conservation(DoC) ranks the Dune Lakes’ extensive lake system as regionally significant because it provides an open, shallow freshwater habitat for a number of threatened species of wildlife as well as for more common ones.

It states that the larger, deeper lakes – Kereta, Kuwakatai, Ototoa, Okaihua – have become of critical importance to wildlife, with the smaller and shallower lakes also providing significant habitats for birds.

Pukeko, pied shag, little shag, little black shag, black shag, mallard duck, grey duck, grey teal, white-faced heron, black swan, paradise duck, New Zealand shoveler, pied stilt, caspian tern, kingfisher, bittern and harrier are among the species found in the dune lakes area.

While the fernbird, bittern, and New Zealand scaup – the numbers of which are on the decline throughout New Zealand because of the continual drainage of fresh-water wetlands – are also found around the lakes.

‘The dune lake system provides the specialized habitat which is required by these threatened species and, as such, warrants preservation,’ states DoC.

Fish & Game are now seeking information and support from a variety of groups and organisations that have studied these, and other dune lakes around the country, observing and measuring the effect infringing forestry has upon them.

For more information contact:

John Dyer, Auckland Waikato Fish & Game Officer

PH 09 8321 724

Mob: 021 0243 0015