Central Otago’s community has drawn battle lines for and against the Santana gold mine at Bendigo on the Dunstan Mountains.
Much has been said about the mine’s potential impacts on Central’s iconic landscape and natural and historic values, and on its vineyards, tourism and way of life. Project opponents have made extensive use of Sir Grahame Sydney’s classic images and Brian Turner’s words.
But these revered locals’ impressions tell part, only, of the story.
My career steeped me in the back country. I can say no other part of New Zealand compares to Central Otago. Its landforms, biodiversity, climate, recreation spectrum, history and landscapes are beyond comparison and distinctive nationally.
This is, I think, why many of us chose to live and visit here.
In the 1980s, the Central Otago conservation estate was a scattering of historic goldfields sites. With Crown pastoral leases widespread, there was no biodiversity-focused public conservation land between Milton and Wānaka. What was known in conservation circles as "The Hole in the Middle" was around 150 leasehold properties.
Tenure review was available to pastoral lessees nationwide from the mid-1990s until 2022. They could invite the commissioner of Crown lands to negotiate agreements on their respective property rights.
Typically, some land would be freeholded and some returned to the Crown — the Department of Conservation — for protection of what the Crown Pastoral Land Act called "significant inherent values". Public access and conservation covenants were often created in the deals.
About 100 lessees completed tenure review, with over 30 more entering the process but withdrawing. Some reviews took up to 20 years and involved multimillion-dollar settlements. A substantial taxpayer investment, tenure review involved teams of Doc technical experts and contractors who inspected the leases to identify significant inherent values and suggest appropriate protection.
On the over 130 properties inspected, very few had nothing worth protecting. At the other extreme, cases could occasionally be made for whole-property purchase by the Crown for conservation.
By tenure review’s wind-up, the process, along with a few other acquisition initiatives, had increased Otago’s public conservation estate by about 240,000ha, an area five times the size of Paparoa National Park.
Most is in Central Otago. Doc is progressively working on signposting and publicising it.
So what did the public get for its investment?
New Zealanders got a substantial piece of the Central Otago high country, and related Southland and North Otago land, added to the public conservation estate.
Its diversity is staggering. Sir Grahame Sydney’s paintings have great depth, but they cannot completely express the land’s variety and splendour.
Here are some of this area’s features, largely protected by tenure review:
Biodiversity; many new-to-science invertebrate, galaxiid and lizard species; several significant Halls totara forest remnants and high country wetlands; up to 300 species of native plants found on one property, a biodiversity hot spot, when the average was about 150 species; western populations and distributions of the iconic Otago giant skinks; range expansions for many plant and bird species; landscape and landform and block mountain ranges as biogeographic islands, each with high levels of endemism (species living nowhere else).
You can further add to that list expansive vistas dominated by landform and tussock vegetation; uncommon distinctive landforms, for example, schist tors; volcanic plugs and basalt boulder fields on the Eastern Kakanui Mountains; secure public access for foot, mountainbike, horse and some 4WD use and widespread and fast-growing mountain bike use.
For iwi there is evidence of permanent occupation and major cultural sites. There is also plenty of post-settlement history, including evidence of early pastoralism and extensive European and Chinese goldmining history, in the Nevis Valley and Shotover Canyon especially.
Protection is within four conservation parks — Eyre Mountains Taka Ra Haka, Hāwea, Oteake and Te Papanui — and other major conservation lands on the Pisa Range, the Old Man and Old Woman ranges, the Remarkables, the Richardson Mountains and the Kakanui Mountains.
Direct economic benefits of the tenure reviews include the fact that 60% of Dunedin City’s water supply is from Te Papanui Conservation Park and that the West Otago rural water supply scheme supplies several hundred properties.
There are significant Pinot Noir vineyards in the Gibbston Valley and at Bendigo and substantial business from tourism in the Wakatipu Basin, Wānaka and elsewhere in Central Otago
I hope this commentary encourages public use and appreciation of Central Otago and the wider Otago high-country public conservation lands and helps ensure they are valued and cherished, and that they endure.
And the best thing? You no longer have to ask for pastoral leaseholder permission to use the land — because it belongs to us all.
• Tony Perrett is a retired Department of Conservation high-country tenure review manager from Alexandra, with over 20 years’ involvement in tenure review and over 30 years’ involvement in Crown management of pastoral leases.
