Tenure review is a process of reviewing the leasehold tenure of some high country land in the South Island of New Zealand. It currently involves 20% of the South Island or 10% of the total land area of New Zealand. Tenure review began with the passing of the Crown Pastoral Land Act 1998.
Historically, much of the high country area has been grazed by sheep and cattle. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s, about 27% of New Zealand's land area was either leased or licensed from the Crown. In the South Island pastoral farming relied on Crown leasehold land. About one-fifth of the occupied land in Otago was freehold. In Canterbury, about two-fifths of occupied land was freehold. [1]
In 2006, Lincoln University lecturer Ann Brower argued that the process is in favour of the lessees rather than the government. [2]
In 2008, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment carried out an investigation into tenure review. [3] A number of recommendations were made, including the establishment of a High Country Commission for a fixed period of time in order to address issues involving the high country. [4]
New Zealand is an island country located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, near the centre of the water hemisphere. It consists of a large number of islands, estimated around 700, mainly remnants of a larger landmass now beneath the sea. The land masses by size are the South Island and the North Island, separated by the Cook Strait. The third-largest is Stewart Island / Rakiura, located 30 kilometres off the tip of the South Island across Foveaux Strait. Other islands are significantly smaller in area. The three largest islands stretch 1,600 kilometres across latitudes 35° to 47° south. New Zealand is the sixth-largest island country in the world, with a land size of 268,680 km2 (103,740 sq mi).
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant has rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property.
A pastoral lease, sometimes called a pastoral run, is an arrangement used in both Australia and New Zealand where government-owned Crown land is leased out to graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands.
In the history of Australia, squatting was the act of extrajudicially occupying tracts of Crown land, typically to graze livestock. Though most squatters initially held no legal rights to the land they occupied, the majority were gradually recognised by successive colonial authorities as the legitimate owners of the land due to being among the first white settlers in their area. The term squattocracy, a play on aristocracy, was coined to refer to squatters as a social class and the immense sociopolitical power they possessed.
Selection is the act of choosing and acquiring a subdivided tract of land for farming purposes in Australia. A selection is also descriptive of the plot of land that was selected. The term derived from "free selection before survey" of crown land in some Australian colonies under land legislation introduced in the 1860s. These acts were intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture, such as wheat-growing, rather than extensive agriculture, such as wool production. Selectors often came into conflict with squatters, who already occupied the land and often managed to circumvent the law.
Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) is the public service department of New Zealand charged with geographical information and surveying functions as well as handling land titles, and managing Crown land and property. The minister responsible is the Minister for Land Information, and was formerly the Minister of Survey and Land Information. LINZ was established in 1996 following the restructure of the Department of Survey and Land Information (DOSLI), which was itself one of the successor organisations to the Department of Lands and Survey.
The environment of New Zealand is characterised by an endemic flora and fauna which has evolved in near isolation from the rest of the world. The main islands of New Zealand span two biomes, temperate and subtropical, complicated by large mountainous areas above the tree line. There are also numerous smaller islands which extend into the subantarctic. The prevailing weather systems bring significantly more rain to the west of the country. New Zealand's territorial waters cover a much larger area than its landmass and extend over the continental shelf and abyssal plateau in the South Pacific Ocean, Tasman Sea and Southern ocean.
The Hāwea Conservation Park is a protected area in the South Island of New Zealand. It was created in September 2008 from land that previously had a number of separate tenures.
In New Zealand "dirty dairying" refers to damage to the ecological health of New Zealand's freshwater environment by the intensification of dairy farming, and also to the high profile campaign begun in 2002 by the Fish and Game Council to highlight and combat this.
In New Zealand, agriculture is the largest sector of the tradable economy. The country exported NZ$46.4 billion worth of agricultural products in the 12 months to June 2019, 79.6% of the country's total exported goods. The agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector directly contributed $12.653 billion of the national GDP in the 12 months to September 2020, and employed 143,000 people, 5.9% of New Zealand's workforce, as of the 2018 census.
A station or run, in the context of New Zealand agriculture, is a large farm dedicated to the grazing of sheep and cattle. The use of the word for the farm or farm buildings date back to the mid-nineteenth century. The owner of a station is called a runholder.
The Crown Pastoral Land Act is an act of Parliament in New Zealand.
Water pollution in New Zealand is an increasing concern for those who use and care for waterways and for New Zealand regulatory bodies. An increase in population is linked to an increase in water pollution, due to a range of causes such as rural land use, industrial use and urban development. Fresh water quality is under pressure from agriculture, hydropower, urban development, pest invasions and climate change. While pollution from point sources has been reduced, diffuse pollution such as nutrients, pathogens and sediments development and from stormwater in towns is not under control. There are more than 800 water quality monitoring sites around New Zealand that are regularly sampled.
Mesopotamia Station is a high-country station in New Zealand's South Island. Known mainly for one of its first owners, the novelist Samuel Butler, it is probably the country's best known station. Despite popular belief, Butler was not the station's first owner.
Sheep farming is a significant industry in New Zealand. According to 2007 figures reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, there are 39 million sheep in the country. The country has the highest density of sheep per unit area in the world. For 130 years, sheep farming was the country's most important agricultural industry, but it was overtaken by dairy farming in 1987. Sheep numbers peaked in New Zealand in 1982 to 70 million and then dropped to about 27.6 million. There are 16,000 sheep and beef farms in the country which has made the country the world's largest exporter of lambs, with 24 million finished lambs recorded every year.
Jondaryan Homestead is a heritage-listed homestead at Evanslea Road, Jondaryan, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It was the base of the former Jondaryan pastoral station, which was originally taken up in 1840, and at one time was the largest freehold station in Queensland. The site contains the current house, which was built after the original was destroyed by fire in 1937, the original kitchen dating from 1844, and a kitchen, butcher's shop, shearer's quarters, stables, dairy, toilet block and store, many dating from the 1860s. It also contains the remains of horse stalls, a slaughterhouse, hide store, and Chinese gardener's glasshouse. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
The process of land selectionin Queensland in Australia began in 1860. It continued under a series of land acts in subsequent years. When Britain claimed possession of Australia, it did so based on terra nullius and did not acknowledge that Indigenous people had any ownership over the land. All land in Australia became Crown land and was sold or leased by the Australian colonial governments according to the needs of the colonists.
Ann Brower is an environmental geographer from New Zealand. A survivor of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, she successfully lobbied for a law change to the Building Act, which was passed in 2016 as the Brower Amendment. Brower was promoted to full professor at the University of Canterbury in December 2021. In 2022 she won the Charles Fleming Award for Environmental Achievement.
Mesopotamia is an area of land at the head of the Rangitata River, east of the Southern Alps and inland from Peel Forest. The area is home to the well known Mesopotamia Station which was established by influential novelist Samuel Butler in 1860 after arriving from England. The name Mesopotamia means "between two rivers."