Editorial: Help yourselves

Peter Jackson

On paper the laws protecting paua and toheroa look pretty good.

Those who take too many, or undersized specimens of the former, and those who take, possess or disturb the latter face very hefty penalties - sufficient, one would think, to serve as a deterrent.

There are two problems. One is that the Ministry for Primary Industries doesn't have the manpower to effectively enforce the regulations. The chances of getting home without being caught are good enough for some to make the risk worthwhile. The other problem is the courts.

Those who work hard to protect these two species, professionally or otherwise, must despair when judges let them down. They have every right to expect much more support than they are getting. In essence they are simply delaying the inevitable, the day when there are no paua left to take and toheroa disappear permanently.

'...when conditions are particularly favourable for the harvesting of paua at Ahipara there will reliably be an explosion in the number of customary harvesting permits issued. Special occasions are obviously tide and weather-dependent.'

Peter Jackson

This disgraceful lack of judicial enthusiasm for dealing to those who plunder paua stocks was displayed once again when a man described by the MPI as a member of a paua poaching operation appeared before the Wellington District Court, having admitted more than 20 charges under the Fisheries Act.

Sonny Gilbert Wairau could have been jailed for five years, and fined $250,000 on each of a number of those convictions. He and others of his ilk could have been taught a real and hopefully effective lesson. What he got was seven months' home detention and a three-year ban from fishing. That'll teach him.

If any paua poacher ever deserved to be jailed, it was this man. According to the ministry, Wairau and his mates called themselves The Paua Corporation. Far from setting out to feed themselves and their families, they illegally took, over seven months, 257kg of greenweight paua and 31kg of sea cucumbers from around the Wellington coastline, and, again illegally, sold them.

According to the ministry, the paua had a commercial value of more than $17,000. And there's more.

Wairau was already a prohibited fisher, thanks to previous convictions. He had also racked up 10 charges of contravening a prohibition order, so he gets another one.

Here we have a man who is intimately familiar with the regulations, who has breached a court order, probably many more times than he has been apprehended, who gets the same treatment that hasn't worked. Prohibiting someone from fishing is supposed to protect precious marine resources from known poachers, but it only works if they comply.

This man obviously hasn't complied. He has continually thumbed his nose at the law.

It is not unreasonable that courts shy away from imposing maximum penalties, whatever the offence. They need to leave room for more egregious behaviour in the future, but surely, poaching doesn't come much worse than this.

How on Earth any judge could come to the conclusion that a man with this record deserves home detention and another pointless prohibition order utterly defies all explanation.

He should have been jailed, and fined. If he didn't have a lazy $250,000 lying around in his on-call account he surely owned assets that could have been sold to raise the money.

'Various items' of fishing gear that Wairau used in the commission of his offending was forfeited to the Crown, which offers scant consolation. Hopefully that included a very expensive boat and vehicle, but even if it did it won't put him out of action.

Why should it? He and his mates have presumably come to the conclusion that the profits to be made from poaching will well and truly cover any penalties in the event of their being caught.

A ministry spokesman said Wairau and two others, who had breached the Fisheries Act jointly and separately, and were still before the court, had been responsible for an elaborate operation that saw large amounts of paua and sea cucumbers taken and then sold unlawfully. That sort of offending, especially around the Wellington region, had a serious effect on the sustainability of the stock, and deprived future generations of a resource that they were legitimately entitled to enjoy and consume.

Exactly. It's a pity the courts don't pay more attention to the rights of others, present and future, who poachers steal from.

Wairau wouldn't be totally out of place in the Far North either. His record might be out of the ordinary, but the same attitude towards plundering paua beds exists here too. Often some feeble attempt is made to justify greed by claiming to be harvesting for an occasion that is allowed by law, but more often than not those claims are specious.

The writer was told some years ago that when conditions are particularly favourable for the harvesting of paua at Ahipara there will reliably be an explosion in the number of customary harvesting permits issued. Special occasions are obviously tide and weather-dependent.

The allowing of harvesting beyond the standard amateur regulations of 10 paua of a legal size per person per day is so open to abuse that it does little, if anything, to protect the beds at Ahipara, but it will no doubt continue, until there are no paua left to take.

Then, of course, there are toheroa. They differ from paua in that the law prohibits anyone from taking, possessing or disturbing them. Once again, those who disregard the law might well have formed the view that the penalty, $500 for the taking of fewer than 50, makes the risk worthwhile, but Waimanoni man Laurie Austen says poaching is not the major threat. He believes people using two- and four-wheeled vehicles to perform wheelies are doing much more damage than any number of poachers.

It would be fair to say that the scientific community, as represented by various government agencies, does not hold Laurie Austen in high regard. It has dismissed his concerns over other issues, including an invasive rock-inhabiting species that continues to spread down the Far North's west coast, as lacking any scientific basis.

That's unfortunate. Mr Austen might not have the requisite degree to call himself an expert, but he knows what he sees, and deserves much more credit than he receives. The 'expert' response to his concerns probably has more to do with hubris and patch protection than any genuine scientific basis for dismissing him.

So when he says bikes and cars are doing enormous damage to the toheroa and tuatua beds on 90 Mile Beach, we should listen. We might, but the experts won't.

Even worse than not listening, the MPI has offered the most appalling excuse for not 'coming up with some form of deterrent' in respect of driving on 90 Mile Beach. The beach is classed as a road, it says, giving public access as of right. Correct. A variety of authorities have jurisdiction over the beach. Irrelevant. Disturbing toheroa is an offence of strict liability, basically meaning there is no excuse. Correct again.

But then the ministry says to prove a case, it would have to show that the driver was acting deliberately in an area where they knew there was a likelihood of disturbing toheroa. Bollocks. If that was true, people who dig them, and say they don't know what they were, would not be prosecuted. And if the beach is classed as a road, is performing wheelies there not illegal, as on any other road?

The MPI seems to be deliberately hamstringing itself; it certainly isn't busting its gut to enforce the law that theoretically protects toheroa 'absolutely,' but patently isn't.