Philippa Stevenson: Wetland wars well worth fighting

Waitangi may have been largely free of protest on Sunday, but Waikato was not.

It was an orderly sort of gathering and the voices pleading the case for indigenous rights were measured, possibly a tad weary, and almost drowned out by the traffic whizzing by on State Highway 1.

Fittingly, this Waitangi Day gathering was at Rangiriri, the site of one of the Land Wars' historic battles. However, it was the cause of native flora and fauna, not people, that inspired Sunday's heartfelt if not heated demonstration.

Last Wednesday, February 2, was World Wetland Day, and events to mark it have been held across the country in the last week. The day's catchphrase was "there's wealth in wetland diversity - don't lose it" and Waikato organisers chose Waitangi Day and Rangiriri for good reason.

The Maori warriors and British sailors who fought each other to the death there 142 years ago would have a hard time recognising their old battleground today. In 1863, Rangiriri, like large swathes of the Waikato and Hauraki Plains, was braided with swamp.

It is the loss of most of these 110,000ha of unique wetland in less than 150 years - nationwide a decline from 1 million ha to just 100,000 ha - which had the protesters' blood boiling. They plan to make Rangiriri the headquarters for a new action, which could be dubbed the Wetland Wars.

Preferring reasoned argument and education to muskets, National Wetland Trust treasurer David Lawrie says a key weapon in the trust's armoury will be the planned National Wetland Centre. The trust owns land at Rangiriri, has building designs in hand and this year will launch an effort to raise more than $1 million to get the project under way.

It plans a hearts-and-minds campaign, aiming to use the centre to educate locals and visitors alike about the importance of wetlands. While private individuals and some staff in regional councils are doing excellent work to protect wetlands, the cause lacks political champions, Lawrie says.

"We need to influence the public to get the politicians motivated."

Trustee and wetland expert Keith Thompson is critical of a lack of a cohesive focus on wetlands.

"We need a national wetland policy," he says. "Wetlands management has been handled regionally by 13 separate councils since 1987 and there are lots of inconsistencies.

"We have a culture of management by policy and planning with regional expedients and compromises pandering to the most influential lobby groups. We've got regional plans, regional policy statements, district plans, 10-year plans, long term council community plans, and wetland accords. There's just not enough constructive work on the ground."

No national survey of the state of wetlands has been done since a report for the now defunct Environmental Council in 1983, Wetlands: a Diminishing Resource. The council, like other bodies that once took a national view of wetlands, ceased to exist in the 1980s.

Thompson fired a broadside at the Resource Management Act's "preoccupation with mitigation".

"Mitigation doesn't work for wetlands because it means compromise. If you have high-value conservation wetlands, the last thing you want to do is reach a compromise with an adjacent landowner. Compromise usually means less water and then you no longer have a high-value wetland."

To illustrate what the Wetlands War is designed to save, the trust also used the Rangiriri outing to launch a booklet, Our Wet and Wild Places, to highlight New Zealand's five internationally recognised wetlands.

They are the Firth of Thames, the Kopuatai peat dome on the Hauraki Plains, northern Waikato's Whangamarino swamp, the northern South Island's Farewell Spit and the southerly Waituna Lagoon.

They are known as Ramsar sites, for the convention on wetlands of international importance signed by 18 countries in the seaside town of Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. Now, 138 countries, including New Zealand, have signed the convention and 1400 wetlands covering 120 million ha have been designated as of international importance.

The booklet, like the wetlands it describes, is full of the surprising beauty of some of our most unusual plants and animals - cushion-like bog plants, sleeping fish and the amazing birds that fly non-stop from Alaska to the Firth of Thames.

Their plight is good reason for protest on Waitangi Day or any other. Their loss would be a tragedy forever.