Some of the content in the Ministry for the Environment's proposed national policy statement on indigenous biodiversity has been described as "alarming" for hill and high country farmers.
In his address to the Federated Farmers high country conference at Wanaka last week, chairman Graham Reed said the document had the potential to become a major tool for council planners to actively discourage indigenous vegetation clearance.
"The right to remove regrowth shrub is essential for pastoral farming on many of our farms. Without it, we lose most of our grazing within a generation or so," Mr Reed said.
One perplexing part of the proposal was that the Crown was specifically exempt from its provisions.
That seemed very much like a case of "do as I say" rather than "follow my example", he said.
"We have made a submission on this document and have suggested that when the authors of the proposal return to the planet they want to save that they could look for some sensible solutions. Crown land, for instance, could be used for offsetting vegetation removal elsewhere."
On a more positive note, the high country group recently met the Minister of Conservation and Minister of Biosecurity to promote the advantages of grazing in conjunction with conservation on retired pastoral land.
Four advantages for returning stock were given - economic, weed suppression, reduced fire risk and disease monitoring - and the response received from the ministers and officials was "encouraging".
"Subject to Doc [Department of Conservation] investigating carbon sequestration opportunities and some concerns about grazing wetlands, we were in agreement that there are win-win opportunities. Doc indicated that it will look at any lease proposal on a case-by-case basis."
Mr Reed believed weeds would become the major problem on retired land and he could not see a Government department ever having the "single minded long-term determination" to keep weeds out.
The theme for the conference was Sensible Solutions, which could be viewed by some as being "a bit optimistic" as the sector had been seeking sensible solutions for nearly 70 years and had found it an uphill struggle, "particularly when faced with bureaucratic reticence and political ideology", he said.
However, he believed more forward progress had been seen in the past 12 months, on a variety of issues, than had been evident for many years.