Subject: RE: Reply to yesterday’s letter to me from Minister Allan – and, as requested by the Minister my attached submission to Fish & Game – with relevant attachments
The Hon Kiri Allan
Minister of Conservation
Dear Minister
Re: your letter of March 4, 2021 which I received yesterday.
Many thanks for taking the time out from your busy schedule to respond to my email of November 30, 2020, regarding the important national issue of trout farming.
Attached, as requested by you, is my submission to the Fish & Game Council of November 13, 2020, in regards to the Council’s approach to trout farming and in particular, the serious economic and employment hazards, that trout farming would pose to New Zealand.
I have also attached the relevant photos and documents that are cited in my submission to Fish & Game.
I appreciate Minister that you will have a particular interest in the supposed economic prospects of trout farming, due to it being viewed by various iwi, including Tuwharetoa, as providing future income and employment.
In this regard, please note the content of my attached submission to Fish & Game from page 5 onwards under the heading Maori and Treaty of Waitangi obligations and which commences by stating:
The report in August to the Fish & Game National Council states that:
19a. Fish and Game is bound by Section 4 of the Conservation Act 1987, which requires us to interpret the Act to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. This means Fish & Game are required to constructively engage with iwi on issues relating to the sports fish etc …
19b. NZC also need to be conscious that applications by iwi to farm trout will be viewed as distinct from other commercial operators.
Similarly, the report by Parliament’s Primary Production Committee, regarding Clive Edward Barker’s petition to legalise trout farming, states: Various iwi support this petition. Ngati Pikiao maintain that trout farming would provide jobs in rural areas. Other iwi groups who submitted in support of this petition include: Ngati Ruapani Ki Waikaremoana, Ngati Tuwharetoa Fisheries Charitable Trust, Tumu te Heuheu, and the Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board. These groups support the petitioner’s reasons for legalising the commercial farming and sale of trout and emphasised the potential economic and employment benefits that trout farming would offer. Lake Taupō Forest Trust and Lake Rotoaira Forest Trust also support this petition for the reasons outlined above.
Please also note my reasoning, that the best thing Fish & Game (and DoC and MPI) could do in ‘constructively engaging’ with any iwi considering trout farming, is to discourage them from it; because trout farming projects will almost certainly be doomed to financial failure but will pose a high risk to an already long-established, successful, recreational sports fishery that is conservatively estimated to be worth $1.5 billion annually to the national economy and which already employs thousands of people – including Maori – especially in regional and rural areas.
On page 6 of my submission to Fish & Game I stated:
In view of the dangers raised above, including the ominous unsolicited warning from Fish Pathologist, Professor Brian Jones, and overseas examples like the wiping out 95 percent of the rainbow trout in American rivers due to disease emanating from a trout farm; surely Fish & Game, the Department of Conservation, and Ministry for Primary Industries have an overwhelming obligation to ‘constructively engage’ with iwi by warning of the intrinsic economic, commercial and disease dangers facing iwi in undertaking any trout farming projects.
After all, no-one, including iwi, should want to embark on an expensive, time-consuming, labour intensive project that is almost certainly doomed to failure and which endangers income from the current highly-successful and lucrative, sports trout fishing model.
It would seem to me, that Fish & Game, DoC and MPI could continue to best serve New Zealand as a whole – and not just trout fishing licence holders – by continuing to fiercely oppose trout farming here. Like good doctors, lawyers or financial advisers, who will sternly counsel their clients about the dangers in taking certain unwise courses of action, Fish & Game, DoC and MPI should play a similar mentor role in strenuously discouraging any and all iwi from the high-risk perils inherent in launching any trout farming schemes. These three agencies could address any illusionary economic and employment benefits presented by iwi groups, by pragmatically stressing and highlighting the present significant economic and employment benefits accruing to iwi via our protected recreational trout fishing ‘industry,’ which will be jeopardised by trout farming and resultant compulsory trout flesh imports.
Please note also Minister, my reference to a 10-year old Dominion Post newspaper report quoting DoC, that recreational trout fishing back in 2010 brought in about $90 million annually to the Taupo economy alone and quoting Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board secretary Rakei Taiaroa as saying: the board … which owned the lake bed, collected about $700,000 in rent for allowing the public the use of the lake, and gained half the income from the 40,000 fishing licences sold each year.
As the NZFFA noted in its September news release: Taking into account inflation, business expansion, higher tourism arrivals and increasing costs, this decades old value [$90 million annually] estimate for Taupo would be much higher now and probably easily doubled.
Being made aware of such current ‘economic’ benefits and existing substantial employment of iwi within the recreational trout fishing industry, it is to be hoped that the new Minister of Conservation, the Hon Kiri Allan, will now support DoC’s firm stand against trout farming – and not a path of appeasement to badly advised trout farming advocates including iwi groups.
After all, why kill the goose that lays the golden egg?
I conclude this letter today, by personally reiterating that same thought to you now Minister.
