Kia Ora Koutou

You may have recently seen TVNZ’s The Sunday Programme’s “Back to Black” story on Te Kuha, a new coal mine proposal on the West Coast.   If you haven’t, it’s worth a look.

CANA has been following the progress of this mine for quite some time. We have made submissions on various aspects: including one about a year ago on the request for access to mine on the DOC conservation estate – Mt Rochfort. The mine would take off the top of this mountain, in the DOC estate, which contains rare bird and plant species – like the Great Spotted Kiwi (recently added to DOC’s priority list of threatened species).

The Buller District Council has now opened the main mine application for submissions, which are due to close on Thursday 18 May.

We have only two days to get as many submissions against this as possible. Please go to the Forest & Bird website and have your say.

 The idea of this mine going ahead, wrecking this beautiful landscape, digging up coal only for it to end up in the sky, is nuts. Especially nuts if you look at what happened on the Denniston Plateau, where the miners finally got consent (after a long fight that many of you were involved in), only for the coal price to plummet. There’s only one worker left at this mine now – but they dug up a lot of the beautiful landscape anyway. They can’t afford to take it out of the ground.

The same thing could happen with Te Kuha. You’d be able to see the scar from this mine from downtown Westport, a thriving tourist hub and, on the other side of the mountain, from the Buller Gorge road – arguably one of the most beautiful drives in the country.

For so many reasons: climate, biodiversity, tourism, this mine has to be stopped.

Please make a submission now, and share it with all your friends.

Nga mihi

The CANA team