A West Coast Regional Council member says some people whose land has been designated wetland have threatened to poison trees if they are not compensated by the Government.
After an eight-year Environment Court process about 6000ha of private land on the Coast has been defined as schedule 1 or 2 wetland in the council's Land and Water Plan.
The designation means landowners will need resource consent and have to obtain an ecology report before they can modify their land, and some uses will be prohibited altogether.
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has said there are no plans to compensate the landowners and some councillors, including Cr Peter Ewen, have denounced the process as a land grab.
Cr Ewen told a council meeting last week there would be consequences for conservation if the Government continued to refuse to address the compensation issue.
"I have heard from the representative of a Westland group ... if there's no compensation, you watch over time: big trees on scenic reserves, big trees that are photo opportunities, they'll change colour pretty quickly.
"They will try to poison them, and said 'no bugger's going to see us'. I don't condone that but I can understand why the threat might be made."
The council last week voted not to accept the recommendations of the hearing commissioner to take 500ha of private land off the list of scheduled wetlands after inspection by an ecologist showed the mapped areas did not meet the criteria.
The plan change would also have made sphagnum moss picking a permitted activity under certain conditions, ending years of uncertainty for the export industry.
But five of the nine members of the council's Resource Management Committee, including the two iwi members, voted against it.
Regional council chairman Alan Birchfield said there were still large areas in maps accepted by the Environment Court that were not wetlands but had not been properly assessed.
"They're taking out 500ha but there were 6000ha on the schedules and the boundaries haven't been done properly, huge areas in Westland that haven't been looked at," Cr Birchfield said.
The hearings had addressed concerns of landowners who submitted to the process, but others had not known their land had been added to the wetland maps by the court after an appeal by DOC and Forest and Bird, he said.
"In my heart, I can't accept anything that's not correct. I think about the other landowners sitting out there who've lost their land and we've done nothing for them. We should be either all in or all out."
Cr Birchfield earlier declared an interest in the issue as his coalmine near Reefton includes designated wetland, and the plan change made a small adjustment to the boundary.
"It's land we bought a while back for settling ponds -- it's not a wetland. It's rolling country but someone looked at a map and said it was. That's the sort of thing we're dealing with here."
Cr Laura Coll-McLaughlin said she shared the concerns about property rights but the plan change would at least allow the council to right a wrong to a small extent.
"We have to fight for these people but we must be ruthlessly pragmatic. If we vote against it, are we going to achieve anything more than what we've got? Are we throwing away a win for a principle?"
Voting down the recommendations would be throwing away the eight years of work by the council, she said.
"If we vote against it, we have lost all the work we have done. It's a rung on a ladder; and turning it down will do us no favours -- you are essentially agreeing with Forest and Bird."
Her Buller colleague John Hill said the plan change was a small win for landowners and the council should accept it.
Resource Management Committee chairman Cr Stuart Challenger asked if the council would be best to go with the gains it had made, and then challenge the boundaries of the remaining areas rather than throw everything out.
But the iwi representatives, who have voting rights on the committee, said the plan change was not a win for Maori.
Te Runanga o Makaawhio representative Jackie Douglas said her people did not want compensation -- they just wanted to be left alone.
The South Westland iwi owns Maori reserve land around Lake Kini that is designated wetland on the court schedules.
"Taking a small win would legitimise theft," Mrs Douglas said.
Te Runanga o Ngati Waewae representative Francois Tumahai said the Crown had given his iwi no relief in 107 years.
"How can we vote for this? They've taken our land and given us the crap, a pittance ... we are stuck in a wetland hole and now they're going to take that off us, so in principle I just can't go with this ... Everyone either gets their land back or we're all stuck together on this one."
Council chief executive Michael Meehan said he was interested in what message the council would like to send to landowners and sphagnum moss businesses who had been waiting for and depending on the council to pass the plan change.
Council chairman Allan Birchfield had a short answer: "They will have to get a resource consent like everyone else. We are all in the same boat."
- by Lois Williams
