November 03, 2022
Time to honour promise on conservation land mine ban
New Zealand’s leading environmental non-government organisations says it’s time for the Prime Minister to keep Labour’s promise to end new mining on public conservation land.
Forest and Bird chief executive Nicola Toki says since the promise in the Labour Government’s first Speech from the Throne in 2017 some 78 individual mining applications have been approved covering 150,000 hectares.
“Public conservation land, those are things like parks and all thise things we love to take out families out in and enjoy but more importantly often the last remaining places for some of our most endangered fauna and flora,” she says.
Ms Toki says in 2010 she was among the 40,000 New Zealanders including Jacinda Ardern who walked the length of Queen St behind a banner reading No Mining Pure NZ.