Rahui being urged for Waitakere Range

http://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/news/2018/5/kauri-dieback-closures-what-you-need-to-know/ Almost complete closure of all tracks, with bio security ‘controlled area notice’. Large fines apparently for trangressors, 14 additional enforcement people employed as well as the rangers, hidden cameras etc. A real shame, I agree with much of the Stuff article - alarmist reporting. Quoting 20 % with no way of knowing the total population in the ranges.

> If you are found in closed areas, you could be issued with a trespass notice. The public are already banned from the certain tracks so how is this different to being trespassed?

bio security ‘controlled area notice’. brings other laws into effect... its not just trespassing as in you're on private property and you get trespassed off the biosecurity issues ca be beefed up with hefty fines to keep people out. its a pretty broad ranging law, usually used to safeguard farming and horticulture when theres pests or microbes that could seriously affect crops or animals... but in this case trying to protect native species from being killed off

Trespass law is very shallow in New Zealand. It's technically legal, if impolite and arguably aggressive, to enter (most) private property until *after* you've been trespassed off it. (Otherwise how would you walk up to someone's door to knock on it?) Trespass notices can only be delivered to specific people, either by speaking to them directly or by delivering a letter to their usual place of abode. Putting up a sign saying "no trespassing" is legally meaningless, because people aren't trespassing until they've been officially trespassed off the land in question. Penalties are also relatively light. As @waynowski says, access to the Waitakeres is being closed under the Biosecurity Act, which is a different mechanism entirely. Also: > And here a great opinion piece blasing the decision Sorry but if F&B's press has been bad, which possibly it is, this opinion piece reads at least as shallowly to me. The author, who 'personally believes' stuff with 'a basic knowledge in high-school biology', is just making stuff up as he goes along to support what he wants to say. He's appealing to the company of ignorance instead of backing up stuff he says with qualified opinion. How does he know what the science community thinks if it's remaining silent? It reeks of the anti-1080 arguments where the claim always boils down to incompetent scientists, fearful scientists, and an ever-widening conspiracy against "the truth". Maybe he's right about dieback being normal and of no consequence, but this opinion is an example of what I've struggled with in this debate. He's not actually producing real evidence beyond his certainty in his own bluster. Auckland Council has actually shown up with scientific opinion that this is very serious, and that restricting people's movement within the range will at least slow the dieback spread. You can tune into main-stream media places like RNZ or Stuff, in publicly available media, and get experts actually talking and writing about this stuff. There's no glowing report of confidence in how the council's handled this, but if anything the line's been to criticise the council and MPI for ignoring the problem too long, having had no plan, not investing in learning about it earlier, and then acting too late and too urgently without any opportunity to plan or get public acceptance. If anything, the problem's been the sort of "shut your eyes, nothing serious to see here" attitude which this author's trying to perpetuate. Maybe there's a good scientific counter-argument out there, but this isn't it. Like so many others, it comes from someone who just seems annoyed they can't go into the range they like. They're clearly disappointed (not surprising), and are making arguments---this time in Stuff's Reader Report section---against the reasoning for closing access to the range, but aren't actually showing up with convincing scientific arguments to counter what's being claimed by the experts. So where's the actual science and qualified expertise around why this move will make no difference?

they've been closing tracks for years but it didnt make any difference to the spread of kauri dieback.

To follow up on the specific question of the legal basis for closure and penalties. The biosecurity act, section 131, allows for the imposition of a controlled area notice. These can restrict (131(3a)): 'the movement into, within, or from the controlled area of such organisms, organic material, risk goods or other goods as are specified in the notice is restricted, regulated, or prohibited in the manner, to the extent and subject to the conditions specified in the notice:' 'Such organisms', in this case _presumably_, being people. Enforcement of this rule is detailed in section 134(1) Offences are in 154O(1) with the penalty detailed in 157(1) 'Every person who commits an offence against any of section 154O(1) to (15) is liable on conviction,— (a) in the case of an individual person, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, a fine not exceeding $100,000, or both: (b) in the case of a corporation, to a fine not exceeding $200,000.' === Concur with @izogi on the science denialist nature of the commentary linked above. If the author (as they seem to want to) wishes to refute a scientific argument, they need to provide evidence of why it's wrong. If they had stuck to the moral argument (e.g. 'my right to walk where my ferebears have walked for generations') then the pursuasive rather than evidence-based approach they use would be more relevent. As @izogi says - very similar to the anti 1080 arguments: there is a good moral basis for arguing against 1080 use (animal cruelty, the ethics of widespread poison application, the effect on others) but the anti's are never happy sticking to their strong moral line and always seem to deviate into fake-science instead.

Hi @madpom. I think you're mostly right except the max penalty I've seen quoted is $50,000 or 3 months imprisonment. Any maximum penalty is unlikely to be realistic in practice for most scenarios, but it's how they tend to talk about things. https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/356326/flouting-waitakere-ban-could-incur-hefty-fines Some media outlets originally reported a wide range of penalties but it seems to have narrowed down to this one. By my reading the penalty's consistent with 134(1)(b) or 134(2A) which are about movement of unauthorised organisms as you've said, but it's also the max penalty for everything listed in 154N(8) to (11), which includes simply failing to comply with "a reasonable requirement or direction made by an official or an automated electronic system in accordance with the purposes of the Act." Have you happened to see any documentation which makes it clear which bit of the Act they're using to restrict access? It's mildly interesting as to how it might also be applied for restricting access to some of the other categories of land which are normally presumed to be open-access because of how they've been legislated elsewhere.

Also +1 on the moral arguments versus factual arguments, @madpom. There's nothing wrong with moral arguments when deciding one thing's more important than another. Maybe the right to access and walk through the Waitakeres is more important than whatever damage it's likely to cause, but believing one way or another doesn't change the facts about what damage would be caused. So far, though, much of what I've seen with the Waitakeres stuff is various people not really acknowledging or countering the factual arguments that have been made, intentionally being unfamiliar with them or just flat-out denying them because they're inconvenient. For example, from the critics instead of simply saying "but pigs do it anyway", it'd be helpful to see a clear and well considered criticism of this statement from Auckland's Tree Council which explains why it's so rubbish, preferably from someone with the background to understand the nature of the argument being made. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1712/S00035/frequently-asked-questions-about-kauri-dieback.htm > Q3. Aren’t pigs and possums spreading this disease? > A. There is no evidence that possums and other small animals spread the disease. Pigs have been confirmed as a vector, but not anywhere near as significant as humans. Humans have been shown by monitoring to be at least 70% of the problem in the Waitakere Ranges because 70% of the infection is along the track network. 48% of the infection is within 50m of a baitline, so again humans are the vector here. 59% of the infection is within 50m of a watercourse. In some cases watercourses run down tracks and so do baitlines, so poorly maintained tracks with water in them are a serious risk. Pigs cause a large amount of soil disturbance when rooting for food on the forest floor, they do this when there is nothing else to eat. Evidence has shown that when pig numbers in the Waitakere Ranges were significantly reduced by intensive hunting (pre 2014, Jack Craw pers comms) the vegetation began to regenerate and the pigs then fed on that rather than rooting and this reduced the soil disturbance impact of pigs by 90-95%.

Madpom, I would think 'such organisms' refers to the Phytophthora sp. - the organism causing the dieback. The movement/transport (by people) of the organism is what's prohibited. I recently attended a discussion by the Australian expert on Phytophthora genus (only one now that his father has retired!) and learned a lot about how Phytophthora moves and survives in the environment. Based on that knowledge, I would think those % on what causes the spread in the Waitakere are highly questionable. "70% of infection is human-spread because 70% is along the track network" - that's *very* simplistic. As well as humans, pigs, possums & other animals use tracks, water flows down tracks. Phytophthora lives in moist soils, mostly (a few species live in the canopy). It travels down slope along drainage lines much more than up slope (but *does* move up, slowly). It can survive hot temps and long dry periods by moving lower in the soil profile and going dormant. It can produce spores for wind dispersal. It can enter waterways and flow downstream. The primary vector, other than water, is movement of moist soil - human, pig, mtb, 4wd - any animal can transport Phytophthora but bigger amimals will have more impact per animal (but 1000 possums could conceivably have more impact than 1 pig). BTW, the Phytophthora species causing the kauri dieback is newly described - origin unknown. There are more than 400 species worldwide, most undescribed - and new species being found constantly.

Hmm. Hear you @bernieq but other than that references to 'organisms' and 'risk goods' in the clause quoted above I can't see what else in the Act gives the power to prohibit entry of people.