'Special protection' for land angrily rejected

A Northland council which earmarked private land on a map for possible "special protection" has been stunned by a furious response from landowners.

More than 400 submissions on Whangarei District Council's "outstanding landscapes" review had been received yesterday. Submissions close today.

A council planner involved in the project went on stress leave when anger first erupted and has since quit.

About 600 ratepayers turned up to a single meeting on the issue.

"We usually get no more than 20," said councillor Frank Newman. "They were pretty hostile."

Mr Newman said about 4000 landowners could be affected - up to 17 per cent of the district.

Former councillor Fritz Visser, who owns 16ha near Matapouri Bay, said the lines over his property included paddock.

"All of a sudden they decided kikuyu was an endangered weed," he said.

Council spokeswoman Ann Midson said the council had been surprised by the vehement response to the review but the initial mailout to landowners was a discussion document only, a fact that appeared to have been lost amid the uproar.

"It is not a part of the picture that we will put restrictions on people's land such that they might as well not own it," she said.

The council would hold at least two more rounds of public consultation through a lengthy district plan process before anything was decided.

Mr Newman hit out at the Auckland-based Environmental Defence Society, which he said had influenced the project by doing some initial work in Northland followed by one of its directors getting the job to carry out the review.

"They have been involved right from the outset," he said.

The society's chairman, Gary Taylor, said Mr Newman should "get a life".

Director Stephen Brown was entitled to do his job as a landscape architect and the society had received none of the $100,000-plus which the council had paid the landscape assessment team.

"The real problem is Frank Newman and the Act Party winding people up," Mr Taylor said.

The Thames Coromandel District Council and Auckland Regional Council have embarked on landscape assessments with the ARC already facing angry Franklin farmers and Awhitu residents concerned that their land would be subject to onerous planning rules.

ARC planning manager Philip Pannett said a "good number" of 114 submissions had been received after maps were sent out showing which areas in the Auckland region might warrant stricter protection.

"About half the landowners have said 'take it off my land'," he said. "The other half have been supportive."

Thames council spokesman Peter Hazael said only a handful of landowners were potentially affected because so much land was in Department of Conservation hands.

The council had surveyed residents on which areas should be protected but could not say what the results were.