Coal News No. 14
Our indefinite occupation of Happy Valley has settled into a healthy routine and Solid Energy hasn’t sent its security guards to hassle our camp for a month. Two weekends ago, 20 Green Party members from Canterbury camped overnight and last weekend it was a similar number from Canterbury Uni Tramping Club. Many individuals and several businesses have donated to the cause with so much food stored at our place we’ve asked people to stop giving for a while!
There’s no sign of any pre-mining preparation In Happy Valley such as a kiwi round-up. The last we heard, Solid Energy (SE) has not yet applied to the Department Of Conservation (DOC) for a permit to move kiwi. This suggests SE may postpone mining for a year, since late autumn/early winter is the only safe time to move kiwi.
We’ve been unable to discover where SE plans to send the birds. Kiwi can’t simply be dumped any old where. They must go to a predator-free area where there’s a high degree of monitoring. Nelson Lakes Nation Park is a possiblity, but the kiwi already established there may be a different strain and its bad practice to mix them.
We’ve heard that Willowbank zoo is interested in the Happy Valley kiwi, but it would be a crime to put wild birds in such a place.
Kiwis call every night in Happy Valley, sometimes very close to our camp. It really is a prime kiwi-listening spot and should be a national park, not a coal mine.
In other news, SE is piling on the pressure for the Minister of Conservation to issue a permit for the removal of almost the entire habitat of a critically-endangered carniverous land snail called Powelliphanta "Augustus".
This is at Stockton Mine, just a few kilometers west of our camp.
If the permit is granted, those snails that are not discovered and shifted will be killed. The Department Of Conservation says problems caused by the act of shifting, plus habitat loss is likely to cause the snail's extinction.
If this snail becomes extinct it will be the country's first-ever wilful extinction.
As well as snails, kiwi are also under threat here.
The coal mining is occuring along a mountain ridge. The snails exist on about 5 ha of land, mostly on the ridge crest. Kiwi occupy the strip below. Both creatures have a Gondwanan lineage - they are more than twice as old as the coal beneath them.
The NZ government has signed an international treaty against extinctions and has a Biodiversity Strategy with the same objective, but pays only lipservice to both.
The coal on the ridgeline lies in a 10m-thick seam with 30m of cliff above. The cliff must be removed to access the coal. There will inevitably be rockfall onto kiwi habitat. The Minister of Conservation has already issued Solid Energy with a permit to drop 250 tonnes of boulders on this habitat and is considering another permit to ban activists from public lands within 500m of the mining.
This is a test case for all species in Aotearoa that are vulnerable, threatened or "nationally critical" as is the case with the snail. The Minister of Conservation has a mandate to protect rare species but he has shown every willingness to consign them to extinction.
Activists from a number of NGOs have taken part in protests over this ridgeline mining/mountaintop removal.
Speaking of this, Save Happy Valley Coalition has been contacted by a group from America that is fighting mountaintop removal in the Appalacians. Its wonderful to have this contact and the prospect of global solidarity actions.
Briefs:
It appears that we’ve managed to head off efforts by former Forest & Bird president Gerry McSweeney for an "Accord" with Solid Energy that would see Happy Valley mined in exchange for funding a conservation project elsewhere. Such an accord would be a disaster, since it’d allow SE to split our movement. They could label F&B the good guys and everyone else the extremists. It would also split the West Coast branch of F&B from the national office, since our branch has a principle that we will not agree to any project that destroys kiwi habitat.
SE has gone to the Court Of Appeal to overturn a decision of the High Court that it must obtain a permit from the Minister of Conservation to shift snails by bulk transfer of habitat. SE believes it has the right to kill any creature within its Stockton mining license, no matter how critically endangered.
SE blames the snail and our protests for jeopardising its export shipments. It has whipped up quite a frenzy here on the Coast, saying 130 mine jobs are at risk if it can’t take all the coal from the snail area on the ridgeline. This is a beat-up of course, but it’s generated more nasty letters to the Westport News. We’ll need to beef-up security on our homes and vehicles if the Minister of Conservation doesn’t give SE what it wants. But I rather fear he will.
Both the minister and DOC are so wimpish.
SE has a position of never compromising, DOC always compromises, so guess who loses out when there’s negotiations.
Pete Lusk
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