An article published yesterday on Yahoo News, New Zealand has revealed that Conservation Minister Nick Smith misled the government amidst claims there were no sightings of Maui’s dolphins in an area known to be part of their habitat.
“Conservation Minister Nick Smith is not telling the truth when he says that no Maui’s dolphins have been observed in the area that the Government has opened up for oil and gas exploration,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.
“Nick Smith’s own department has documented evidence that he is wrong, and that there have been sightings of Maui’s dolphins in the area that National is opening up for oil exploration.
“This gives us no confidence that this Government is taking the plight of the Maui’s dolphin seriously.”
Maui’s sightings from the Department of Conservation’s own database mapped onto the area open to the Government’s competitive tender for petroleum exploration permits, known as Block Offer 2014, shows that ten Maui’s sightings are within the Block Offer area.
“While the International Whaling Commission is calling for even greater protections for Maui’s dolphins, this National Government is putting these beautiful dolphins at greater risk of extinction, then misleading the public about it,” said Dr Norman.
In a separate article published hours later on Stuff.co.nz, Dr Nick Smith admitted there could have been sightings of the dolphins in areas opened for oil and gas exploration but goes on to deny misleading the government.
Smith this evening confirmed what he described as some unverified sightings in the newly-opened area which were brought to his attention today.
He conceded he should have been more clear in the House but did not accept that he had misled Parliament.
“When I made the statement that there was not a single observation of the Maui’s Dolphin I was referring to the independent programme that the Government had set up as part of the Maui’s Dolphin risk management plan.”
Smith said this involved 809 days of observations where not a single Maui’s Dolphin was seen in the area, and maintained their presence was “close to zero”.
The petroleum industry posed a very low risk to the safety of the dolphin – the world’s most endangered dolphin with a population of just 55, all residing in New Zealand waters off the west coast of the North Island, he said.
“All the technical advice on the Maui’s Dolphin is that over 95 percent of the risk is from set netting and from fishing,” he said.
Prime Minister John Key also dismissed the Green Party claims that the permits put the dolphins at greater risk as “based on a load of mumbo jumbo”.
“What a load of nonsense. If that was absolutely correct then given that we’ve been drilling the Taranaki region since the 1960s and there’s never been a situation where a Maui Dolphin has been killed as a result of that – you think it would have happened some time in the last 50 years. It’s just the mumbo jumbo that the Greens go on about.”
The issue of the Maui’s dolphin is gaining a lot of political traction and could be an important factor for the country to consider when voting in elections later this year.
While the government argue about which party is right and which party should be in charge, a unique dolphin species is still at concerning population numbers and as pointed out countless times by the International Whaling Committee, something needs to be done very very soon.
Hobbits of the Sea 