By VERNON SMALL deputy political editor
Conservation Minister Sandra Lee has buried what she clearly thinks is one of the battiest ideas to cross her path for ages.
But Act's Gerry Eckhoff - the same MP who wanted to farm kiwis to save them - is determined to find out why a
plan to make coffins out of native timbers to sponsor the conservation of bats has had the blood sucked out of it by bureaucrats.
Ms Lee said the Threatened Species Trust turned down the plan because it was not compatible with conservation principles.
Conjuring up Hammer Horror images of vampire bats and her namesake actor Christopher Lee, she said it had been rejected "because native trees serve no conservation purpose when felled, milled, manufactured into coffins and buried underground, and because the association with bats was seen as being Macabre."
The public awareness manager at DoC, Nicola Patrick, said the unidentified company made an approach in 1999 but no formal proposal was put forward.
The department had indicated the sponsorship deal would probably be rejected because of the use of native timbers and because it was felt the link between bats and coffins risked offending people.
But Mr Eckhoff is unrepentant.
He will not disclose the name of the company, which fears it may be ridiculed, but said it was a genuine offer to help to protect the threatened native animals.
"All right, this company deals with death and undertaking ... but the bat is the only New Zealand mammal. I don't know that people will immediately draw all sorts of macabre connotations between the two things."
The trust is a partnership of the Department of Conservation, the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, the Conservation Authority and corporate sponsors. Its programmes have covered kiwi, kakapo and kokako.
