Source: Greenpeace
More than 30 protests and community events will take place across Aotearoa this Saturday as opposition to the Coalition Government's Conservation Amendment Bill continues to grow.
Protests are planned from Invercargill to Mangawhai, including at Mission Bay in Auckland, the Wellington Botanic Gardens, Godley Head in Christchurch, Aramoana near Dunedin, and dozens more in beaches, forests, parks and town squares around the country.
Greenpeace campaigner Gen Toop says the scale of the mobilisation reflects how strongly New Zealanders feel about protecting public conservation land.
“Nobody wants to show up to their favorite conservation areas to go camping, tramping, hunting, or fishing and find that the quiet wilderness they knew is gone, replaced by an open mining pit, a private resort or a shopping complex,” says Toop.
“Public conservation land exists today because generations of New Zealanders have cared for it and fought to protect it. People are turning out this Saturday because they don't want to see those hard-won protections dismantled.”
The Bill proposes to change the purpose of the Conservation Act from protecting nature to enabling commercial exploitation “to the greatest extent practicable” instead. It originally also proposed making it easier to sell off around 5 million hectares of public conservation land, before the Government backed down and committed to removing those provisions.
Toop says introducing the Bill in an election year was a major political gamble.
“The last time a Government tried to weaken protections for our most treasured conservation land in 2010, massive public backlash forced them to back down entirely.
“This Government has made a big political gamble by putting public conservation land in the firing line in an election year. It has badly underestimated how deeply people from all walks of life care about these places and want them protected.”
Toop says widespread public opposition to the Bill is already having an impact.
“Tens of thousands of people across Aotearoa have signed petitions, made submissions and spoken out against this Bill. Together we've already forced the Government into an embarrassing backdown on one of its most extreme proposals to make public conservation land easier to sell.”
“But this Bill is still rotten to its core. It opens the door to more mining, more commercial exploitation and degradation of the wildlife and places we all love.”
“The snow-capped mountains, ancient forests and wild rivers of Aotearoa are part of who we are as a nation. We have a responsibility to leave these places as wild and beautiful for the wildlife that depends on them, and for the generations who come after us.
Protestors are calling on the Government to bin the Conservation Amendment Bill entirely.
A full list of events is available at binthebill.nz (http://binthebill.nz).