Forest and Bird calls for fast-tracked coal mining application to be declined

Forest and Bird are calling for a fast-tracked coal mining application to be declined after the Environmental Protection Authority found gaps in its conservation plan.The EPA has sent a letter to mining company Bathurst asking for more information about its application to mine coal from Buller's Denniston Plateau.It has asked the company to be more specific about how it would protect the area's wildlife, which includes protected lizards and insects.RNZ has approached Bathurst for comment."There were some shortcomings in their plan for lizards," Forest and Bird's regional conservation manager Scott Burnett said."The Department of Conservation's best practice for lizard management is to salvage more than 80 percent of the lizards from a site before development occurs. In Bathurst's application they expect that fewer than one percent of lizards can be feasibly salvaged, so that's a massive scale difference there."Likewise, the avatar moth, which recently won bug of the year, it's only found on the Denniston Plateau, and a number of the sites where it has been found are within the mine footprint. The entomologist who discovered the avatar moth, Brian Patrick, feels that if the mine is to go ahead the moth will go extinct."Burnett said he was pleased that the EPA had gone back to Bathurst to ask for more information."Outside of our overarching concerns around the failings of fast-track, this is an example of the process working as intended," he said.One expert fears this moth will go extinct if the mine goes ahead.CC BY 4.0 Brian Patrick"We would ultimately like to see the application declined. We know that is not likely, given the permissiveness of the regime, but we would also like to see really robust conditions in place both to protect wildlife and also to ensure New Zealanders don't foot the bill for future cleanup."Buller District Council mayor Chris Russell said he supported Bathurst's application and believed it should be granted, but also noted it was important to consider the environmental impacts."The effects on ecology and water quality, along with acid mine drainage, rehabilitation and the project's long-term obligations, must be properly tested," he said."[But] the significant economic and social consequences of closure must be given the same consideration."He noted the project would maintain jobs for at least 390 people, the vast majority of which lived in Buller.Burnett disagreed with that argument."This is very much pitched as a jobs versus nature argument. The Buller community outwardly support the mine going ahead to protect jobs in Westport," he said."This occurring in 2026 in a climate and biodiversity crisis, where people feel like their best recourse is to double down on short term jobs that cause this environmental harm... [that] is a failure of national and local leadership."Russell said the final decision belonged to the EPA."My responsibility is to ensure it understands what is at stake for Buller, the wider West Coast and New Zealand," he said.