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Auckland Regional Council chief Mike Lee has urged conservationists to drum up support for a ban on vehicles on west coast beaches from Muriwai to the mouth of the Kaipara Harbour.
Mr Lee said such a ban - proposed yesterday to a council hearing by Forest and Bird's Kaipara branch - would not be easy to introduce and would unleash "an enormous backlash".
He urged branch convenor Suzi Phillips to muster all the support she could get from her national office and to provide the council with potentially useful ammunition, such as details of an nzherald.co.nz opinion poll which in March found substantial opposition to the vehicles on beaches.
Of 3611 people who responded to the poll, which asked what should be done about driving on beaches, 49 per cent wanted a total ban and 42 per cent sought restrictions.
Only nine per cent said they wanted nothing done about the problem, which was highlighted on New Year's Eve when 13-year-old Daisy Fernandez of Tauranga was struck and killed by a teenage motorcyclist at a beach near Dargaville.
Ms Phillips produced photographs to the council's annual plan hearing of deep tyre tracks over sensitive sand dunes to illustrate her organisation's concern about damage to native grasses and breeding grounds of endangered native birds such as fairy terns, dotterils and wrybills as well as international migratory waders.
"While we are aware that a total ban on vehicles seems an unpopular and extreme solution to the problem of vehicles on beaches and sand dunes, we would like to suggest that it will be the most effective solution."
But she also said councils should provide areas near beaches for motorbikes and off-road vehicles, to supplement the development of more private 4WD experience parks.
Asked by councillor Brent Morrissey about advertisements promoting the use of beaches by new vehicles, she said approaches were already being made to manufacturers to tone these down.
Mr Lee said he had long been concerned at the collapse of west coast toheroa populations as beach traffic became heavier.
