Hopes are rising in the South Westland farming community that the Department of Conservation(DoC) will renew grazing licences in the vast river runs where cattle have grazed for more than a century.

DoC manages 42 grazing concessions and one special licence on public conservation land between the Waitaha River to Big Bay in the south, and at least 15 are up for renewal.

Conservation groups have long opposed the practice of allowing cattle in the braided river valleys.

Runholders — some of them sixth generation — have been nervous about their future since DoC cancelled John Cowan’s river flat licence at Haast in 2020, ending 160 years of continuous grazing.

In a presentation to the West Coast/Tai Poutini Conservation Board, DoC staff said nine grazing concessions had recently expired; six more would expire by the end of December and all the licensees were reapplying to have them renewed.

The licences ranged in size from less than half a hectare for grazing a couple of horses while their owners went whitebaiting, to 146ha to graze 153 beef breeding cows.

Most concessions were held by landowners surrounded by conservation land: 92% of South Westland was in the DoC estate, staff noted.

Any renewals granted in the coming months would be for 10 years – a term longer than 10 years would require public notification, at more cost to the farmer.

The long-established grazing licences came under threat from stock exclusion and water quality regulations enacted by the Labour Government in 2020.

But fencing and riparian planting to keep cattle away from the sprawling and ever-changing gravel riverbeds of South Westland were never going to work – a flood would wipe them out in a matter of hours.

Research commissioned by DoC last year showed the cattle had no impact on the pristine quality of the main waterways in the district, staff reported.

“This was primarily due to the sustainable approach we have taken including low stock numbers … and extensive rather than intensive grazing.

“DoC has worked hand in hand with the Ministry for Primary Industries to ensure the stock exclusion rules would not apply to these grazing licenses.

“But to ensure we meet the amended RMA regulations, we are reviewing special conditions for all new grazing applications to ensure adverse effects are addressed.”

Conservation Board member Rob Wilson told LDR he had hope DoC would renew all the grazing licences.

The Harihari dairy farmer, who is not a DoC licensee, said the cattle were doing no harm to the rivers and no significant harm to forest margins.

“This land has been grazed in some cases for 150 years and the families on the land down here go back generations,” the Ngāti Māhaki representative told LDR.

“They’re not in it for the money – it’s their home and they’re just about tangata whenua.”

Decades of grazing had changed the ecology of the river flats – but evicting the cattle now would soon have them overrun with gorse and deer, he predicted.

“The farmers are the ones doing pest control down there – it’s part of their licence conditions and if you lost them, you’d put the whole community at risk.

“So I’m pretty hopeful DoC will recognise all that.”

A DoC research paper published in the New Zealand Journal of Ecology in 2002 found that while cattle on forest margins wiped out some native species like griselinia and pigeonwood, other plants such as mountain horopito regenerated better under cattle than in their absence.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air