Mining area native life treasure chest
Sir Alan Mark and Rod Morris say opencast mining on the Denniston Plateau would devastate an extensive area of unique conservation land.
We have been dismayed that, just two days after the general election, Minister of Conservation Kate Wilkinson, and then acting Energy Resources Minister Hekia Parata, jointly approved the proposal of the Australian mining company, Bathurst Resources, to establish a major opencast coal mine on public conservation land on North Westland's Denniston Plateau. Not only did this approval constitute a broken promise (it was contrary to a pre-election promise by both ministers last July that "significant applications to mine on public conservation land should be publicly notified") but it also clearly flies in the face of worldwide concern for continued global warming associated with the burning of a wide range of carbon compounds.
New Zealand should be seriously addressing its global responsibilities in curbing greenhouse-gas production rather than apparently ignoring this, apart from its promotion of aforestation. These are critical times for addressing global warming, recent international conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun having been unable to reach agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in a year's time, and now Durban which seems to have made some progress.