Councillors who voted to forge ahead with mapping significant natural areas (SNAs) on the West Coast are likely to lose their seats at the next election in retaliation, regional council chairman Allan Birchfield says...Professional planners working on the combined plan have been warning for month
West Coast Regional Council chairman Allan Birchfield has lost his bid to bar significant natural areas (SNAs) from private land. Councils and iwi working on a new combined district plan for the region have been agonising for months over the legal requirement to identify SNAs.
Councils and iwi working on a new district plan for the West Coast have been warned they can't get away from dealing with the thorny question of SNAs and protecting indigenous biodiversity. Members of the Te Tai o Poutini plan committee agonised over the issue for more than an hour at their
SNA stands for Significant Natural Area and they are pretty important whichever way you look at them. Forest and Bird says they are "New Zealand's most important remnants of native habitat - places where rare or threatened plants or animals are still found".
