The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, released the 92-page report, which contained three key recommendations: the establishment of a High Country Commission; less rigid splitting of land between conservation and freeholding; and greater efforts to protect water quality and prevent the spread of woody weeds.
Forest and Bird advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell has labelled the report "the poorest report to come out of the commissioner's office that I can recall".
He said it was out of touch with recent developments, riddled with inaccuracies and poorly argued.
Federated Farmers High Country section chairman Donald Aubrey hoped the Government would look seriously at some of the recommendations, including establishing a High Country Commission, but High Country Accord chairman Jonathan Wallis was reserving his opinion on the commission, saying it faced an impossible role satisfying the various interest groups.
Mr Wallis welcomed a recommendation to change the Crown Pastoral Land Act to give greater flexibility on how land was split.
Dr Wright said in an interview that tenure review of Crown-owned pastoral lease land, where land of conservation value was given to the Department of Conservation (Doc) to manage and land of productive value was freeholded, had resulted in mixed outcomes for the environment.
It had provided diversity for traditional merino farmers, economic resilience for some communities and protection of conservation value, but it occurred incrementally, allowing responsibility for issues such as water quality, weed and pest control to fall between the cracks.
Land Information New Zealand (Linz) was responsible for the financial transaction in tenure review, and Doc for protecting conservation values, but some areas of responsibility were missed.
Water quality from more intensive farming on freehold land, and eradicating or controlling woody weeds, were two areas she said needed urgent attention but fell outside department briefs.
Dr Wright said tenure review encouraged single use and clear ownership of land, but her research showed that applying it to the high country was problematic.
It was understandable that Doc would take the opportunity of tenure review to extend its conservation reach, but it resulted in a sameness with the conservation estate.
"The Otago and Canterbury conservancies have plans for 22 high country parks. That is a lot of tussock grassland. It is somewhat similar."
Doc also has priorities for conserving lowland forest, wetlands and marine parks; and she has called for a rethink about what needed to be conserved.
"It raises the question on how to best spend your conservation dollar."
She believed there was greater scope to use conservation tools such as covenants to protect conservation values on private land, and said studies showed a 96% compliance with QEII covenants.
The creation of a South Island-based High Country Commission, an autonomous crown entity, would identify achievable and desired outcomes for the high country while also being cheap to run, compared with the $47 million tenure review had cost farmers so far, she said.
Agriculture Minister David Carter welcomed the report, saying it "rightly challenges the underlying ideology that land must be for conservation or farming".
It would contribute to policy work on the issue already under way, he said.
Key points
What is at stake?
• More than six million hectares of the South Island or a quarter of New Zealand's land mass.
Who initiated the report?
• Investigation was started in 2006 after concerns about the environmental impact of tenure review and complaints by High Country Accord and Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society.
What happens now?
• Ministers to consider the report, although they are not obliged to act on recommendations.
What has tenure review delivered?
• 66 of the 303 South Island high country pastoral leases have completed tenure review.
• 96 are at some stage of tenure review.
• 800,000ha of new land now managed by the Department of Conservation (Doc) and 300,000ha has been made freehold in the past 20 years.
• Crown has paid $67 million to former lessees for their interests and on fencing. Government $20 million for freehold title.
• Doc has formed eight conservation parks and gazetted a further two.
The report's key recommendations:
• Tenure review should continue. Must be in wider public interest.
• Government should establish High Country Commission to advise on issues.
• Less rigid tenure review outcomes.
• More funding to eradicate woody weeds.
• Minister of Conservation should review high country park policy.
