Brownlee: Park safe despite survey plan

Large chunks of New Zealand, including the Northland kauri forests and Mt Aspiring National Park, are part of a proposed Government survey to pin-point potentially valuable areas for mining.

In a notice to mining companies, Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee told them not to bother applying for mining permits for nine months from March 22 because the Government was going to pick which land within the survey areas to open for tender for exploration permits.

The document has worried Forest and Bird, whose spokesman Quentin Duthie said it was odd that the areas listed did not match those earmarked for a $4 million aerial survey in a public discussion paper released on the same day.

The discussion document made no mention of Mt Aspiring National Park, yet it was closed to applications for mining permits while the Government did its survey, he said.

But Mr Brownlee yesterday said Mt Aspiring remained off-limits. He also gave the strongest assurance yet that a proposed national park in Northland would not be derailed by the Government's mining plans.

Mr Brownlee said the maps in the notice to miners were "general".

The South West New Zealand World Heritage Area - which includes the Westland Tai Poutini, Aoraki/Mt Cook, Mt Aspiring and Fiordland national parks - remained off limits to mining.

The notice, signed by Mr Brownlee, listed much of Northland, most of Coromandel, all of Stewart Island, part of Mt Richmond Forest Park near Nelson and almost all of Mt Aspiring National Park among the areas to be investigated.

Mr Brownlee said that if an area was closed to applications for exploration permits, it did not mean it was in line for mining.

"The ... geomagnetic survey is a flyover that picks up everything. You can't say 'turn your machine off when you flying over here'," he said.

The areas are closed for nine months, after which the Government will announce which areas it is interested in.

Unlike Mt Aspiring, a proposed new national park in Northland covering the Waipoua forest park was not excluded from mining in the Government's public discussion documents.

But Mr Brownlee said that was only because Waipoua was not yet a national park.

The Government still intended to make it one.

"Anybody that suggests we are going to be knocking the kauri trees over and digging underneath them is ... right into the realm of true fantasy."

The documents ask for public feedback on two proposals - a $4 million aerial survey of possible mineral deposits and a proposal to open 7058ha of conservation land to mining in the Coromandel, Great Barrier Island and Paparoa National Park.

Public submissions on the mining plans must be lodged by May 4.