Stock Exclusion Rules
The new stock exclusion rules for wetlands and waterways more than one-metre wide come into force in 2023 and the stock exclusion rules for slopes less than 10 degrees come into force in 2025.
MfE has said that there will be no exceptions; “The regulations require stock to be excluded from waterways and their margins by whatever means the stock owner decides is practical,” it said.
MfE also stated that the landowners will be responsible for weed control.
Fencing 32,000km of waterways to meet new stock exclusion, regulations will cost farmers dearly alongside the costs from the loss of production from the 19,000ha in the three-metre riparian setback areas.
So now we have a situation where we have the landowner’s freehold rights being taken from them in the guise of good environmental stewardship and the landowners also being required to undertake costly onerous duties because they have that ownership even though their rights have been removed.
In my opinion this is much more like a police state than the New Zealand in which I grew up.
The Labour government of the day in the late eighties, under Prime Minister David Lange, took the position that private freehold rights would never be taken from NZ landowners but fast forward to today and the current government has no compulsion about doing just that.
Removing the freehold rights from a select group of landowners within NZ – FARMERS!
A large number of farmers have voluntarily fenced their properties to exclude stock from waterways but now they are being told that they will have to eventually move those fences to accommodate the new riparian setback rules of three metres.
They are also then being told that they are responsible for the weed control on this riparian setback area even though they have had their freehold land rights taken away.
It is a fact that some of our worst polluted waterways are in urban areas so if this idea of a three metre setback and exclusion of use is the best way to protect the waterways then obviously the next move on the part of the government will be to require the same rules apply to the urban landowners surely.
A three metre riparian setback and preventing any development or use of that area must surely be implemented at the same time as the new rules for farmers as the government expert advisors have found that this is the best way to protect the water quality. Of course the urban landowners will be required to maintain this area with weed and vermin controls and a management plan put in place setting out how this will be done.
The stock exclusion is easily explained as being a means of preventing them from defecating in the waterways and also from causing erosion of the banks and therefore sedimentation of the waterways. The riparian setback is a bit harder to justify on these grounds and therefore must be seen as a precautionary method of preventing entry into the waterways.
If this is the case then one can only assume that the three metre riparian zone prevention is only about the entry of contaminants as the fences at the farm edge of the riparian zone will prevent actual stock entry.
This being the case then it must be that these same criteria should be applied in the urban zone as this is where some of the most polluted waterways are in NZ, though maybe it is too hard to manage this in the urban zones and it may cause too much of an inconvenience to urban land owners so we should ignore that and target the easy ones.
Andy Loader
Co-Chairman P.L.U.G.