Changes to the conservation status of DoC administered lands

Steph Borrelle made this Official Information request to Department of Conservation

The request was refused by Department of Conservation.

From: Steph Borrelle

Dear Department of Conservation,

I would like to request under the Official Information Act a list of all changes made to the conservation status of public conservation land in New Zealand in the ten years between September 2004 and August 2014.

Conservation land refers to all land administered by the Department of Conservation including, but not limited to, areas defined in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act 1991.

Changes to conservation status include:
1) any direct alterations classification of the land’s specified conservation status/classification that would result in changes to land use (i.e. reserve formation).
2) any alterations to permitted activities or land purpose that do not otherwise fall under 1) (i.e. changes to access, or activities permitted within the area).
3) any alterations to land use that have been initiated by legislative change (e.g. West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Act, which permits a new activity in certain West Coast conservation lands).

I would like the location, date of change, original and modified classification (or land use/activity as appropriate), and area of land affected by the change.

Yours faithfully,

Stephanie Borrelle

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Mike McGavin left an annotation ()

Hi Steph.

Depending on how the request is interpreted, I suspect it could be a massive list, and DOC might not be able to compile it without a big work-load (which would be a possible reason for refusing unless you get more specific). If DOC doesn't supply this, note that you can also search the online Gazette archive. The Conservation Act, National Parks Act and Reserves Act all require that changes in land status be published in the Gazette. See https://gazette.govt.nz/ and then (eg) search for Land Notices published under any of those Acts. Without a specific date range I can count 876 notices under the Conservation Act, 25 under the National Parks Act, and 3515 under the Reserves Act.

Much of it will probably be small and obscure parcels of land in various places, shoring up very minor land boundaries and exchanging minor bits of land and the like. You might need to cross-reference it with the NZ Primary Parcel Database (able to be superimposed on a nifty, zoomable map at http://data.linz.govt.nz/ ) to make much sense of it.

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Steph Borrelle left an annotation ()

Thanks for your response Mike, I will look into the Gazette database, which I was not aware of.

Regards

Steph

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From: Annabel Enayati
Department of Conservation


Attachment OIA 14 E 215.pdf
45K Download View as HTML


Dear Stephanie,

 

Please see attached response to Official Information Request 14-E-215.

 

Kind regards,

 

Annabel

 

Annabel Enayati

Personal Assistant to Marie Long, Director Planning and Permissions

Policy and Regulatory Services Group

Department of Conservation|18-30 Manner Street, Wellington

 

 

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