Richmond tenure reveiew a disaster for Lake Tekapo

30 July 2006 - Christchurch

Contact: Eugenie Sage, South Island Field Co-ordinator, 03 366 6317

Government’s review of land tenure in the high country is a disaster for the nationally important tussocklands and landscapes of Lake Tekapo, the Forest and Bird says.

Land Information NZ (LINZ) has released its analysis of public submissions showing the final proposal for the 9,567 ha. Richmond pastoral lease on the eastern shores of Lake Tekapo. It involves freeholding around 6,000 ha. of lakeshore land.

“Pastoral lessees continue to be the major beneficiaries of tenure review. Conservation gets the crumbs - high altitude land with little grazing or economic value for other uses,” Forest and Bird South Island field co-ordinator, Eugenie Sage says.

“Richmond has been Crown land for more than 150 years. Now Government is virtually gifting 6,000 ha. (62% of the property) to the current lessees, instead of recognising the importance of lakeside lands for public recreation, conservation and landscape protection and adding them to the conservation estate.  Land to be freeholded includes the access road to Round Hill skifield, and significant areas of snow tussock, and healthy short tussock grasslands.”

“There is very little public conservation land on the shores of either Lakes Tekapo or Pukaki. Richmond is a major missed opportunity to protect accessible tussock grasslands suitable for easy family walking, picnicking and mountain biking, in a dramatic landscape with splendid views across Lake Tekapo and to the Southern Alps,” she says.

“Tekapo township is booming. Lessees have no right to subdivide pastoral lease land.  Once they gain freehold title, the current Richmond lessees will be able to make substantial windfall gains, at the public and Crown’s expense, from on-selling land for subdivision and other lakeshore development.”

Ms Sage said that while the current lessee may claim he has no immediate plans to develop the area, former pastoral lease land on the shores of Lake Wanaka, at Closeburn near Queenstown, and near Lake Dunstan had often been quickly onsold for subdivision, viticulture and other development after being freeholded.

“There is nothing to stop lessees changing their mind and no covenants to protect landscape values or tussock grasslands."

“The virtually non existent subdivision controls in the Mackenzie District Plan mean Lake Tekapo is at risk of the sprawling subdivision and trophy house blight which characterises parts of Lakes Wakatipu and Taupo,”  she said.

See also: FEATURE ARTICLE BY EUGENIE SAGE, SOUTH ISLAND FIELD COORDINATOR Click for PDF

Background

Fulbright scholar and Lincoln University lecturer, Dr Ann Brower said in a 2006 report analysing tenure review:
“The Crown is asserting neither its property rights nor its bargaining powers. Instead, the Crown’s position of neutrality leads it to give away land title and pay constituents to take it. In short, the myth of apolitical administration makes the Crown complicit in giving away freehold title to New Zealand’s iconic high country, and paying the lessees to take it.”

From 1998 to June 2005 the Crown paid farmers $15.5 million (nett) in equalisation payments despite lessees being able to freehold substantially more land than the Department of Conservation has received as new conservation land.

LINZ’s final analysis of public submissions on the Richmond proposal is on: http://ww.linz.govt.nz/core/crownproperty/highcountry/leaseslist/richmond/index.html

LINZ and its consultant, property information and valuation company Quotable Value, have rejected public submissions which sought increased protection of tussock grasslands and shrublands, and the retention of developed areas of the lakeshore as pastoral lease.

The final proposal is worse than the preliminary one. LINZ now proposes to freehold the access road to the Round Hill skifield, and part of the old Coal River riverbed, important invertebrate habitat previously proposed for protection. 

The 3,585 ha. on Richmond which LINZ proposes to protect as conservation land is largely the steep upper slopes and screes of the Two Thumb and Richmond ranges, a small cliffed and rocky stretch of lakeshore and an isolated boulderfield on a river outwash fan. 

Lake Tekapo is a dramatic part of the nationally outstanding landscapes of the Mackenzie Basin. Richmond pastoral lease is 15 kms from Tekapo township and is an obvious part of the views from the Church of the Good Shepherd. 

As pastoral lease Richmond is owned by the Crown but leased to farmers.  It has been Crown land  for more than 150 years, since the Kemp Purchase from its original Maori owners in the 1840s.

Most of the land around Lake Tekapo is in five pastoral leases, Richmond, Mt Gerald, Godley Peaks, Glenmore and Mt Hay. All five have joined the Government’s tenure review programme. Lakeshore lands at Lake Pukaki comprise five pastoral leases and freehold land.

Existing public land at Lake Tekapo is limited to a 20 metre wide legal road around the lake edge of Lake Tekapo and some small reserves close to Tekapo township.

The Mackenzie District Plan has few controls on subdivision in the rural zone except in a narrow strip (up to 100 metres wide) beside the lake.  Beyond this a resource consent is not required for subdivision. 

Freeholding risks uncontrolled ad hoc subdivision, proliferation of trophy houses, and more intensive farm development and forestry degrading these special glacial and tussock landscapes at the foot of the Richmond and Two Thumb ranges.