Listen Now: 
Te Taitokerau MP Kelvin Davis says the Minister for Primary Industries isn’t doing enough to protect Northland’s environment from damage done by the swamp kauri bonanza.
Nathan Guy says he’s happy with the job his ministry is doing to enforce the existing law, but he’s asked for changes to increase transparency, including inspection of all finished products for export approval, and inspection of extraction sites.
Mr Davis says the minister continues to insist everything is alright, when it clearly is not.
He says it’s one thing to recover logs from under paddocks, but too many are coming out of swamps.
"Under the soil up there in the far north we’ve got what is called the pan. It’s a hard layer of sandstone and the water sits on top of it, but as soon as you puncture it by digging even a fencepost hole the water drains straight through into the sand below and the wetland dries out and dies. We’ve got to stop this because only 5 percent of new Zealand’s wetlands still exist. Up north there is probably even less," Mr Davis says.
He’d like to see the regional council putting resources into protecting the remaining wetlands.
Copyright © 2015, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
RELATED NEWS
