Letter to the Editor

Destroying kiwi habitat
While all eyes have been on the Mangawhai Central development, Jonathan Larson, aka The Workboot Councillor, has had Shane Cullen’s diggers and trucks crawling up and around his steep south facing Brynderwyn blocks for weeks, clearing large house sites and forming access roads. The gradients in places are so steep that stretches will need to be concreted to make it only half safe to drive up there.

There is no limit to some people’s greed it seems. Sadly the Kaipara District Council was very weak in allowing the carving up of Larsen’s top block which has been deemed an outstanding landscape even before it was sold as it is covered in huge, old native trees.

Living in the Heads you might not see the full damage yet, but wait until there are houses up there. We can only pray that the kiwi population will survive this onslaught and that there will never be a house fire in the hills as it would be unstoppable.

Martina Tschirky
Mangawhai

Jonathan Larsen responds:
Mangawhai Heights is a significant ecological enhancement project on former farmland at the end of Kapawiti Rd. I am a director of the landowner. The project involves the permanent protection of 37 hectares of regenerating and mature native forest, including livestock removal, covenanting, and an extensive pest control programme including possums, rats and mustelids. Contrary to Ms Tschirky’s allegations, the project provides significant protection to, and enhancement of, the habitat of Kiwi and other indigenous fauna.

The retirement of the land from farming is funded by allowing a limited number of lots to be created with access formed via existing farm tracks to existing clearings. All sites have specific controls to ensure that buildings are of recessive form and colour. The works that are currently visible are the formation of the access to the lots via an existing farm track alignment. As with all roads, it is simply not possible to deliver the finished result the day after construction commences. Once completed with recessive surfacing and revegetation of batters, the access will not appear significantly different to what it did prior to construction.

Consent for the project was granted following an extensively scrutinised full public notification, submission and hearing process. At the time of consent being granted the Council was governed by an appointed Commission and I was not an elected member.

Council was not “very weak” in granting consent ─ in fact it was extremely thorough and rigorous, with the decision determined by an independent commissioner. The Council decision was subsequently confirmed by the Environment Court including that it constitutes appropriate subdivision, use and development in an outstanding natural landscape in this location, and for providing the protection of areas of significant indigenous vegetation and significant habitats of indigenous fauna, both being matters of national importance under the Resource Management Act.

Ms Tschirky is fully aware of the above having been both a submitter to the public process and a member of an interested party on appeal. She lives on and owns a lifestyle property on the same road and approximately 1 km from the project site. Having now developed her own property it seems that her rhetoric is driven less by fact and more by her desire to prevent others from enjoying a similar lifestyle in proximity to her own property.