Nearly one third of conservation land in New Zealand has been held in a generic ‘stewardship land’ category, which has lower protections than other conservation land. The Government now has plans to reclassify all stewardship land, starting with the West Coast. 

The reclassification will create many new conservation parks, reserves, and national park land on the West Coast of the South Island.
 
 Nicola Toki, Forest and Bird Chief Executive, says: “There are many hundreds of thousands of hectares of stewardship land on the West Coast which have been in limbo since 1987. A lot of places are the last homes of some of our most threatened species and rare habitats.
 
 “For many years this has been in the ‘too hard’ basket. I’d like to acknowledge all the hard mahi done by the panels, and in particular the Ngāi Tahu mana whenua panel, to get to the point where we are today where these recommendations are being shared with New Zealanders.
 
 “There is work still to be done, but this is a massive step forward in helping protect nature on the West Coast.”
 
 This push for stewardship reclassification originated when the Prime Minister announced a policy of ‘No new mines on conservation land’ in 2017.  

“Forest & Bird will be working closely with other environmental groups to look at the detail. The proposals need to go hand in hand with planned changes to conservation law. Protected area classifications have to be brought up to date so that they provide the protection to nature that New Zealanders would expect to see delivered in the proposed new reserves.”