Minister defends $10m park purchase

The Government's $10 million payment to buy out the leasehold on a North Otago high-country run is twice the market value of the property as a farm, farmers say.

The Williamson family were paid close to $1200 a stock unit for Birchwood Station, when the market rate for high-country farms - according to land agents - is about $500 a stock unit.

But Conservation Minister Chris Carter said yesterday the rights to the land were not being bought as a farm.

Instead, the 23,700ha property in the Ahuriri Valley, near Omarama, would eventually be the centrepiece of a 50,000ha high-country conservation park.

The Government expected that as pastoral leaseholders from other, adjoining, high-country runs elected to undergo a tenure review process, more land with strong conservation values would be added to the Birchwood Station to create the park.

Mr Carter rejected claims the Government paid too much, saying the property was valued before being bought and it was not bought as a farm.

It was a one-off purchase of a property the size of the 22,530ha Abel Tasman National Park, with 90 per cent of the area considered to have high conservation values.

Allan McKenzie, manager of the Nature Heritage Fund, which bought the property, also denied it paid too much.

"There are no more than three or four properties in the South Island of that nature," he said.

Property owner Ron Williamson said the price was fair and the property was worth it. It had been bought on the open market, rather than acquired through the tenure review process.

This was the third time in 13 years the Williamson family had been approached to sell and the Nature Heritage Fund had to compete with others wanting to buy high-country properties.

Environmentalists have been arguing since 1986 for land on the run to be taken back by the Government and turned over to conservation.

A campaign 17 years ago called for de-stocking and the "surrender" of the lease to the Government.

Campaigners argued that the surrounding Ahuriri Valley, in the Mackenzie Basin, offered a great sweep of long straight vistas, from the permanent snows near the main divide to the near-desert of the lower reaches.

Mr Carter said the alpine landscape of the property was criss-crossed by rivers and streams teeming with fish and it was a crucial breeding area for threatened native birds such as black stilt, black-fronted terns and wrybills.

The Birchwood lease was interspersed by a patchwork of "unalienated" public land, state forestry, and reserves, but in 2000 the Williamson family were criticised for limiting use of the publicly funded access road.

Mr Carter said the Department of Conservation and Land Information New Zealand were identifying high-country properties for possible purchase. A new network of parks was an integral process of tenure review.

Farmers and politicians said the purchase price had raised expectations among high-country farmers and they would drive a harder bargain when negotiating to sell land with conservation values.

"No pastoral lessees will ignore what has happened on Birchwood, none of us will," Act list MP and Roxburgh pastoral lessee Gerry Eckhoff said yesterday.

Jack Davis, a Tarras farmer and the chairman of the Federated Farmers South Island high-country committee, said the Government had shown the premium it put on "inherent" conservation values.

"It's an indication really of what the inherent values are worth on these properties."

But Mr Eckhoff said the Government would find lessees hard-nosed in negotiations.

"You can't pay someone $300 to $400 a stock unit when you paid $1200 for Birchwood," he said.

"This is a situation it [the Government] has created and no farmer will accept this as a one-off."

Mr Eckhoff said the Birchwood sale price would drive up the price of high-country land.

"It's not Shania Twain or rich United States, Japanese or Chinese investors, it's the New Zealand Government."

He said there were no publicly available criteria on which to judge whether the sale was value for money other than "the subjective opinion of the minister and DoC".

* A stock unit is a standardised measure of the number of sheep, cattle and deer carried on a farm. For example, one sheep equals one stock unit but a cow is measured as equivalent to five to six sheep.

- NZPA