The Government is proposing a new policy to take control of private land away from its owners if the land meets broad criteria concerning native plants and wildlife.
They call this the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity (NPSIB).
The new rules will penalise most harshly the landowners who have taken care of the native bush and other indigenous life on their land, while creating complex, expensive, and intrusive compliance obligations on everyone. None of this time and money will be going to supporting the real, on-the-ground actions landowners take to care for their native bush and wildlife. Indigenous biodiversity will become a liability for all landowners and leaseholders, while millions of dollars are spent on bureaucratic compliance costs.
Urban landowners won't escape this onslaught of unworkable regulations either, as anyone could be caught by the policy's broad, sweeping categories.
Instead, Groundswell NZ is proposing a policy that focuses on supporting landowners' active management of their biodiversity by:
(1) Treating indigenous biodiversity as an asset, rather than a liability
(2) Rewarding those who protect their natural environment, rather than penalising them
(3) Motivating and empowering landowners to take on-the-ground actions to protect the biodiversity on their land
In July 2022, Groundswell NZ developed a website which enabled supporters and concerned landowners to provide feedback on the NPSIB.
Over 3,200 people used our tool to tell the Government to scrap this policy and adopt the Groundswell approach.