Greens welcome Save the Mackenzie Country campaign
green-party
Fri Aug 20 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Greens welcome Save the Mackenzie Country campaign
Friday, 20 August 2010, 2:57 pm
Press Release: Green Party
Greens welcome Save the Mackenzie Country campaign
The Green Party today welcomed the joint launch of Forest and Bird’s Save the Mackenzie Country campaign and the Artists as Activists exhibition highlighting threats to that iconic landscape.
“New Zealanders love the Mackenzie Country. It is one of our most instantly recognisable landscapes, and is home to a host of rare and threatened plants and animals,” Green Party Conservation Spokesperson Kevin Hague said.
“I am delighted that Forest and Bird have launched a major campaign to protect this unique eco-system from the many threats it currently faces.”
Forest and Bird launched their campaign today at the opening of Artists as Activists, an exhibition of environmentally and politically motivated artworks at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington. The exhibition features the work of leading artists like Grahame Sydney, Sam Mahon, Jane Zusters and poems by Brian Turner.
“The iconic Mackenzie is under threat from intensive agribusiness. Pivot irrigation for massive dairy conversion is turning the Mackenzie from brown to green.
“I don’t usually lament the ‘greening’ of New Zealand, but massive green pastures replacing rare brown tussockland have no place in the Mackenzie.
“New Zealanders showed how much they value the Mackenzie earlier this year when they submitted in their thousands against planned factory-style dairy farms in the area.
“That particular threat has been averted for now, but the ad hoc expansion of irrigated farming in the area hasn’t slowed and remains a huge concern.
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“Without a coherent approach to land-use management in the Mackenzie it will disappear before our eyes in a series of random decisions.
“The Green Party supports Forest and Bird’s call for a drylands conservation park in the area, and is also calling for a National Policy Statement on the Mackenzie to co-ordinate its management between central and local Government.”
Mr Hague attended the opening of the Artists as Activists exhibition today and said he was particularly impressed by Sam Mahon’s interactive dung sculpture of Environment Minister Nick Smith.
“I wouldn’t want to take it home though,” he said.
ENDS
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