The Department of Conservation is also consulting on the National Conservation Policy which will be established if the Conservation Amendment Bill is passed into law. Submission close on that policy on 10 August 2026. This deadline is after the closing date for Bill but before the consideration of submissions on the Bill has occurred by the Select Committee. That arrangement assumes that the Bill will not change or be rejected by the Select Committee. This is not a good way to develop policy. Any Conservation Bill should be in its final form before companion policy is made. It must involve the public especially given the Bill currently has no process to consult the public on the first national conservation policy.
This proposal would replace the General Policy for National Parks and the Conservation General Policy which where both initially adopted in 2005.
This policy suffers from the same problems the Bill does including:
- no protection of World Heritage Areas;
- inappropriate economic objectives;
- weak focus on protecting and restoring threatened species and ecosystems,
- Missing Te Tiriti settlement provisions.
Missing from the draft policy are the strong conservation objectives that exist in the current general policy and in the national parks policy:
“management objectives for indigenous species and their habitats and ecosystems and recreational freshwater fisheries and their habitats, consistent with planned outcomes at places, for the purposes of:
i. prevention of the loss of indigenous species and the full range of their habitats and ecosystems;
ii. maintenance of representative examples of the full range of indigenous ecosystems;
iii. maintenance of populations of indigenous species, habitats and ecosystems with unique or distinctive values;
iv. recovery of threatened indigenous species (including their genetic integrity and diversity), and restoration of their habitats where necessary;
v. restoration of threatened indigenous ecosystems where necessary;
vi. maintenance of the ecological integrity of indigenous ecosystems consistent with the purposes for which the land is held; and
vii. protection of recreational freshwater fisheries and freshwater fish habitats.”
The policy has weak reference to the marine environment and marine threatened species including areas which the Department manages. This needs to change.
Proposals for new national direction for conservation can be found here and close on 10 August. Submissions should be sent to landlegislation@doc.govt.nz