09/08/2026
Nearly 40 years ago, New Zealand’s first Minister of Conservation, Hon Russell Marshall, stood in Parliament during the second reading of the Conservation Bill and said something we desperately need to remember today:
“New Zealand’s protected areas are not up for barter. They are a treasure, a taonga that must be handed down unspoilt from one generation to another. They are irreplaceable and do not have a price.”
24 March 1987.
I keep wondering what Russell Marshall would say if he could see the debate we are having almost four decades later.
When did protecting something permanently become an inconvenience?
When did the safeguards around conservation land become dismissed as “red tape”?
When did “streamlining” become more important than ensuring that the places we deliberately set aside remain protected for those who come after us?
The Conservation Act was never intended to make conservation convenient.
It was intended to make conservation endure.
There will always be another development proposal. Another economic opportunity. Another argument that this particular piece of conservation land is different, or that exchanging it, disposing of it, or weakening the protections around it can somehow be justified.
That is precisely why those protections exist.
Because if conservation survives only until somebody identifies a sufficiently valuable alternative use for the land, it isn’t really conservation at all.
We didn’t inherit these places with an entitlement to spend them.
We inherited them with an obligation to pass them on.
Nearly forty years later, Russell Marshall’s words haven’t become outdated.
They may be more important than ever.
Conservation land is not up for barter.
