Kerre Woodham: Snail's pace progress as Powell sends miners home

On the one hand, I like living in a country where heavy machinery and multi-million-dollar contracts come to a grinding halt because of taniwha.

Remember the taniwha that lived in the Waikato River? Road construction was halted while kaumatua were consulted (at a very competitive hourly rate, by all accounts) as to how best to continue road widening without enraging the taniwha.

And work on the Albany Puhoi extension came to a standstill a couple of years ago, when it was discovered that nesting birds would be disturbed by construction activity. Transit delayed the work until the birds could be safely shifted out of harm's way, and then continued, weighed down with the environmental strictures under which consent for the highway had been granted.

And now we have rare snails threatening the jobs of 115 miners on the West Coast. Solid Energy has suspended mining in part of its Stockton mine after rare giant land snails were found on the Mt Augustus ridge last week. The company is well aware of its environmental obligations. There was no suggestion of ploughing into the snails and reducing them to sludge.
As soon as powelliphanta augustus, or Powell to his mates, was spotted, the whopping great trucks and diggers and excavators were shut down and the men were sent home to await instructions. The company is now waiting for permission to move the snails to another part of the forest where they'll be safe, but that permission is slow in coming.

Now the Buller mayor fears that jobs will be lost, export orders for coal will be cancelled and billions of dollars will be lost to the economy.

There's a touch of Chicken Licken about the Buller mayor - that is indeed a scenario, but it's the worst-possible scenario and as we've seen, compromises can be reached between industry and conservationists, provided everyone is reasonable. The conservationists are delighted at the find of Powell and his mates. They believe this is a rare sub-species of the giant land snail that can be found in other parts of the country - predominantly the West Coast and the Marlborough Sounds. They didn't want a dirty great coal mine excavating parts of Stockton anyway, so the discovery of this very rare sub-species is fortunate indeed for those in the green corner.

Conspiracy theorists might suspect that the snails have been planted precisely to bring about the suspension of operations, but however they got there, the snails are there now and it's snails one, Solid Energy nil at the moment.

As I say, I'm glad I live in a land where consideration is given to the environment and where money doesn't buy you the right to destroy everything around you in pursuit of financial rewards.

I've read Carl Hiaasen's books - I was brainwashed at an early age. But at the same time, if I was one of the people charged with managing these projects, or if it was my signature on the cheques I might feel differently. And if I was a Stockton miner, waiting to hear whether or not I still had a job, I might well believe that the only good snail was a dead one, sauteed in garlic and butter, rare sub genus or not.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY