In February 2021, with New Zealand’s Covid-19 alert levels still fluctuating, plans were hatched to broaden the appeal of a Canterbury tourist destination.
Hanmer Springs, a 90-minute drive north of Christchurch, is already known internationally for its thermal pools. But the complex’s owner, Hurunui District Council, wanted to give tourists more reason to come.
(According to the district council’s last annual report, the pools and spa complex attracted more than 460,000 visitors, employed almost 150 people, and made a $1.3 million operating surplus.)
The solution loomed above the town: Te Tihi o Rauhea/Conical Hill, the location of the town’s most popular walk.
Council-owned tourism company Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa applied for consent to install and operate a thrill-ride, known as Flyride, involving suspended trolleys running down a 500-metre-long cable track, on the western face of the hill’s recreation reserve.
The project attracted $2.2 million from the Provincial Growth Fund. The initial target was to attract 50,000 visitors a year, with profits bolstering the council’s coffers.
Opponents worried about noise, the lack of parking, and the visual effects, plus risks to indigenous biodiversity – in particular to endangered lizards and their habitat.
However, independent hearing commissioner Dean Chrystal decided to grant consent.
His February 2022 decision said: “While I accept there will be some adverse effects associated with the proposal, some of which will be mitigated in time, in my opinion the key matters have been adequately addressed and/or mitigated through conditions.”
The decision was appealed to the Environment Court by Friends of Conical Hill, an incorporated society comprising members of the Hanmer Springs community.
Hearings have been held, and with the case resuming in court early this year it’s worth traversing what’s been discussed – and what couldn’t be.
One central theme is a nationally endangered green lizard, with a fixed gaze, distinctive raised scales, and a penchant for basking in the sun.
Before the hearing, the suppression order
In February last year, Environment Court Judge Jane Borthwick ordered expert evidence about lizards – herpetology – be kept secret. Hearings, which started two weeks later, would be held with the public excluded, and restrictions placed on access to the court file.
Conical Hill is home to four species of lizard: rough gecko; northern Southern Alps gecko, pygmy gecko, and the South Marlborough grass skink. The rough gecko is nationally endangered, while the others are listed as “at risk – declining”.
This is well known.
What isn’t known, however, is the location of private land over which a QEII conservation covenant is proposed, to protect rough gecko habitat – a compensation offer being made by the council-owned tourist company.
Judge Borthwick’s judgment said: “The disclosure of information relevant to significant lizard habitats may lead to lizard habitat and/or lizards being poached, harmed or killed.”
Parties to the proceedings and expert witnesses would have access to the relevant documents and evidence, but the public would not, with protection of threatened indigenous species trumping the fundamental principle of open justice.
Newsroom was provided with expert affidavits, but large swathes were redacted.
However, important context can be gleaned from the legal submissions, documents released by the Department of Conservation (DoC), and documents from the original council hearing.
At the original consent hearing, Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa sought a confidentiality arrangement to protect the location of habitat contained in the lizard management plan.
When Commissioner Chrystal signalled he didn’t have the powers to do so, the plan was withdrawn from evidence. Later, Chrystal commissioned an independent peer review of the plan.
What’s so special about the rough gecko (Naultinus rudis)?
The Herpetological Society website describes it as an “absolutely stunning green gecko species with unique morphology”, often found in forests in the South Island’s north-east. It’s known to have excellent camouflage.
“Considered by many to be amongst Aotearoa’s most enigmatic gecko species, the rough gecko gets its name from the very distinctive raised (or domed), and enlarged scales covering the dorsal surfaces of their body.”
The tree-dwelling lizards are omnivores, and avid sun-baskers – therefore, predominantly diurnal (day-active). Their defensive behaviour against predators is a barking sound.
“Māori first described the vocalisations of green geckos to Europeans as being like kata – laughter, being a repetitive call somewhere between a bark and a squeak.”
They can live more than 50 years in captivity, but are thought to die younger in the wild. Their main threats are from habitat clearance and predators.
Expert advice for Flyride acknowledged only a “fraction” of rough geckos within the construction footprint are expected to be detected, and therefore able to be salvaged and relocated.
Stepping back, it’s important to note all four lizard species on Hanmer’s Conical Hill have “absolute protection” under the Wildlife Act, which means disturbance requires a permit from DoC.
The thrill ride’s original consent application said either no habitat for either rough gecko or South Marlborough grass skink would be disturbed during construction of Flyride, or, if it was, a Wildlife Act permit had to be secured. This would ensure “native wildlife habitat will be appropriately managed”.
(This view of appropriate management negates the right of lizards to live unmolested in their natural habitat.)
Commissioner Chrystal noted DoC didn’t submit on the consent application. He took that to mean it had no concerns or if it did, they were best addressed through the permit.
“Given [DoC’s] experience, if approval for the LMP is obtained I consider it is reasonable to assume that DoC will have undertaken a thorough job in its assessment and are comfortable that the outcomes of the LMP will be achieved.”
Permission to kill
DoC’s Wildlife Act authorisation, and “decision support document”, issued in May 2022, was released to Newsroom by the department.
The application proposed mitigation to protect lizards, including the salvage and release of threatened and at-risk lizards before works begin “to avoid injury and death”, as well as indigenous planting within the construction area, and weed control. Wasps will also be controlled, and rodents monitored, “which will reduce lizard predators in the area”.
However, the application was, bluntly, to “catch and handle wildlife on site, and to kill wildlife”.
It was “unclear” if the application was consistent with legislation, the document said.
“…while the number of lizards killed will be reduced by the salvage efforts, it is inevitable that statistically some lizards will be missed in the salvage and subsequently killed during construction. Incidental kill, while not ideal, is an activity which can be authorised by the department.”
The summary of a meeting between DoC and Hurunui District Council in September 2021 said there was a concern a lizard species, whose name is redacted, “are not expected to be able to succeed in the Conical Hill area despite the mitigation currently proposed”. The passage goes on to say the department’s then operations director for the Eastern South Island, Nicola Toki, was the decision-maker “due to the status of the rough gecko”.
The Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board requested two conditions: requiring all four lizard species to be salvaged, instead of the original two, and for long-term, multi-species predator control to be implemented. Both were rejected, based on technical advice.
“The technical adviser is confident … that the application does exhibit clear protective benefit for the lizards even in its current state (without the board’s proposed special conditions).”
On the latter point, the advice was that monitoring wasn’t plausible without significant investment “that outweighs the impacts”.
Advice in the decision support document advocated holistic consideration of the application.
Much was made of the proposed creation of a conservation covenant on unprotected private land to “maintain high-quality rough gecko habitat in perpetuity”. An agreement with landowners had already been signed but the legal status was “not yet secured”. The covenant area was two-to-three times that of the proposed Flyride’s footprint.
However, even after considering the technical, statutory, and legal aspects, “it is unclear whether this application is consistent with the Wildlife Act from the perspective of protection of absolutely protected animals on an individual level”.
“Originally the application did not have sufficient mitigation measures to outweigh the destructive effect of the works on particularly the [redacted], however the applicant was able to make changes and upon submission of an updated LMP the technical advisor now agrees the activity holistically has protective benefit,” DoC’s document said.
“The conservation covenant, provisionally secured by the applicant, is sufficiently large and of high enough quality to suggest that this habitat being protected under a legal mechanism, would have protective benefit for other comparable lizard habitat.”
Te Rūnanga o Kaikōura and Ngāti Kurī supported the proposal.
“A product of this type will bring further value to the village with an attraction that will invite a wider demographic to the town.”
Hurunui Mayor Marie Black
The opening submissions in the Environment Court by Friends of Conical Hill (FOCH) lawyer Gerard Cleary reveal the covenant is proposed for a property in the Kaikōura district.
He poses: can the offer of a covenant over a different site in a different district achieve protection of Conical Hill’s ecology? “The answer must be no. Essentially, this is because compensation is not mitigation of adverse effects.”
Canterbury’s regional policy statement contains an objective of halting the decline of Canterbury’s ecosystems and indigenous biodiversity. Also, Conical Hill qualifies as habitat of significant indigenous flora under section 6 of the Resource Management Act, making its protection a matter of national importance.
Meanwhile, submissions from Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa’s lawyer Jo Appleyard said every effort had been made to minimise the impact of Flyride, but not all effects on lizards could be “avoided, remedied or mitigated”. That’s why the company offered biodiversity compensation through the proposed QEII covenant.
The appeal can only succeed, Appleyard said, if the court found the adverse effects of Flyride were so significant as to outweigh all the positive effects and benefits, including the covenant – “which will not be provided without consent being approved, and will be the first ever established on private land for rough gecko”.
“Considerable comfort can be taken from the fact the proposal has been authorised under legislation that requires absolute protection, and that there is a link between the two processes so that one cannot proceed without the other”.
Hurunui Mayor Marie Black backs the new attraction.
Black tells Newsroom: “From my perspective a product of this type will bring further value to the village with an attraction that will invite a wider demographic to the town, with the potential to increase the visitor spend through the village and across the district, as a district we continue to seek opportunities that will make our district an attractive and exciting place to visit.”
(Government figures published in November confirm $1.8 million has already been spent on Flyride, and Black says council officers are confident the project can be delivered within the expanded budget of $2.7 million.)
Appleyard’s opening gambit in the Environment Court was to spruik the economic and social benefits of the planned thrill ride. To expand and improve its tourist offerings, the town needed more activities in the $15 to $100 bracket, she said.
Meanwhile, Cleary, the lawyer for Friends of Conical Hill, suggested the shadow cast by the proposal was too long.
“The society’s position is that establishing an amusement ride on Te Tihi o Rauhea/Conical Hill represents too high a price to pay in terms of the loss of important values associated with an icon of Hanmer Springs.”
The relentless march of economic development is destroying the biosphere on which we all rely on for our continuing existence. ‘Thrill rides’ are always going to trump environmental protection, that’s why we’re on our way to an existential crisis. The concept of cumulative effects has never been understood by planners or council regulators.
If there is one thing we should have learnt in lockdown, it was the benefits of peace and quiet and the return of audible bird song. We also should have used the time to examine the benefits of slow tourism. But no. It seems that thrill seeking takes priority over everything for those who stand to make a buck or two. Aside from all the obvious environmental benefits of putting such plans aside, such changes tempt the noisy thrill seekers, thus driving away those who prefer to be quiet and observe what few remnants of the natural world are still afforded us. If this plan goes ahead, Hanmer may well be the author of its own demise.