Snapshots taken on a holiday in Tuscany, Italy became a teaching aid for the country's top environmental watchdog when he met Waitakere City councillors yesterday.
Slides showing a 300-year-old villa surrounded by grapevines illustrated Dr Morgan Williams' explanation to the council's planning committee of a living natural heritage area.
TheWellington-based Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment had flown to Waitakere City at the request of the committee, which last month was stung by his suggestion that the Waitakere Ranges could suffer from "death by a thousand cuts."
Dr Williams contended that present subdivision rules were not enough to save the Waitakeres from suburbia and should be bolstered by making the ranges a living natural heritage area.
This had worked overseas by allowing people to live in areas where landscape, heritage and ecological values were sustained.
Dr Williams told the committee that the villa owner had waited two years for local authority permission to extend an underground cellar.
But he had accepted the need for controls on development. The landscape's value was in its form, shape, colours and texture and it was a combination of these which attracted tourists from all over the world.
"The Waitakere Ranges are a unique backdrop. How are we going to keep those values?" asked Dr Williams.
But Oratia landowner Paul Mitchell told the commissioner that even under the present regime of ranges planning controls he had struggled for more than six years just to get subdivision rights.
His property had been in the family for four generations and there was no intention to subdivide it in the near future.
But he said rights were important when some others in Oratia lived in sheds because they were barred from selling some of their bush land.
The committee chairman, Don Chapman, said after the meeting that Dr Williams had agreed a priority was determining the exact extent of the ranges, and areas that were appropriate for further development.
"It is important that areas for protection are properly defined so we can ring-fence those.
"This council sees protection of the environment as paramount. But at the same time we want to ensure that the rights of individual landowners are upheld."
