The proposed law change would allow conservation land in the Coromandel to be sold, exchanged, or disposed of – a change that could have significant consequences for mining activities.

Once areas coloured in red on our map are no longer Crown land, they will also no longer be protected from mining activities under Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act.

While this outcome is not explicitly stated anywhere in the proposed Bill, it emerges from the interaction between multiple pieces of legislation, raising serious concerns about transparency and intent.

“This is either a deliberate move to throw out existing protections for the Coromandel’s wild places and green light mining, or it’s a serious oversight that Ministers need to fix,” says Richard Capie, Forest & Bird’s Group Manager for Conservation Advocacy and Policy.

“This isn’t something most people, or even most MPs, will spot on a first reading, you have to join the dots across different laws to realise that mining protections for an iconic place like the Coromandel could simply fall away.”

The Coromandel Peninsula currently enjoys some of New Zealand’s strongest conservation protections (alongside national parks) through its inclusion in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act, which prohibits mining on specified Crown conservation land.

However, the Bill does not include the Coromandel in the list of areas protected from land disposal or exchange. If the Coromandel land currently protected from mining is disposed of or swapped, it would no longer be Crown land, meaning Schedule 4 protections would automatically fall away.

“The Coromandel Peninsula is meant to have some of New Zealand’s strongest protections,” Mr Capie says. “But these reforms effectively create a “back door” pathway to remove those protections without ever saying so directly – and in doing so open it up for destruction.”

Forest & Bird says the issue highlights a broader problem with the Bill: significant downstream impacts are not clearly disclosed.

The organisation warns it signals a wider policy direction that could extend beyond the Coromandel.

Key concerns include:

• A non-transparent weakening of protections for a highly valued conservation area.
• Lack of explicit disclosure of downstream impacts.
• A broader signal that other conservation land, including national parks, could face similar risks.

“This legislation looks increasingly like a way to enable the future mining or development of public conservation land,” Mr Capie says.

“It raises a fundamental transparency issue – if Parliament is being asked to vote on legislation without clearly understanding its real-world consequences, that’s a serious concern. And if it can happen in the Coromandel, it can happen elsewhere.”

With public submissions on the Bill closing on Thursday 2 July, Forest & Bird is calling on the Government to urgently clarify its intent and amend the legislation to protect the Coromandel.

Forest & Bird is looking for:

• Immediate confirmation from the Minister on whether this outcome from the removal of Schedule 4 protections was intended.
• Amendments to explicitly exclude the Coromandel from land disposal or exchange, or to retain Schedule 4 protections regardless of land status.
• Stronger transparency requirements to ensure interactions with other laws are clearly disclosed.

“New Zealanders deserve to know what’s really at stake,” Mr Capie says. “Major changes to our most protected and iconic places should never be buried in the fine print.”

“The Coromandel holds deep environmental, cultural, and recreational value for New Zealanders. It’s home to North Island brown kiwi and Hochstetter’s frogs. We can’t afford to let its protections be quietly dismantled, and time is running out for the public to have their say.”