Dowie Sarah: Wildlife (Powers) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Wildlife (Powers) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9989. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): It is an honour to rise in support of the Wildlife (Powers) Amendment Bill and an honour to speak on behalf of the dedicated Department of Conservation (DOC) rangers who deal with protecting wildlife who deal with detection of those who seek to harm or poach our wonderful unique and rare wildlife and who investigate those criminal activities and apprehend offenders and they should be acknowledged.I want to say to Mr Parker who just sat down in respect of water quality that in Southland it has been a wonderful process led by Environment Southland to put in place a land and water plan that looks to the future on the back of the national policy statement to maintain and improve our water catchments. It has run a collaborative process that has involved not only DOC stakeholder advice but also those working in the dairy industry and those working in the sheep industry—a very collaborative approach that brings all of the stakeholders together to maintain and improve water quality. Of course the DOC has been part of that. But back to the bill at hand which is in respect of amending the powers dealing with detection investigation and apprehension of offenders against our wonderful wildlife. I am very supportive of that and the powers that will be extended and given to our DOC rangers who often find themselves in isolated areas having to deal with extreme situations that in some casescan put them into harm’s way but they do their job extremely well and should be thanked very much for it.Tourism is of course growing in New Zealand. It is now our second-biggest export earner and 3.2 million people visited New Zealand in 2015. On the back of that of course New Zealand has as part of that a niche market because people come here to enjoy our natural beauty to enjoy our rare and unique wildlife and to see these animals in situ. They are able to go into our national parks into our conservation areas and into our reserves which span the length and breadth of New Zealand and enjoy seeing these wonderful species in their natural habitat. Of course that is also a risk because it means that poachers can come into our country sometimes undetected and given that they are paid quite considerable amounts they can get away with taking some breeding pairs of our wonderful geckos skinks and birds. When you are talking about dealing with threatened species to have a breeding pair taken from that population can be extremely devastating and we need to protect our wildlife for our future generations to enjoy. So we need to give our DOC rangers extended powers to deal with these offenders effectively.I want to just turn to my colleague Scott Simpson. He talked about some of the wonderful natural areas in his region. Of course I have Fiordland National Park and Rakiura National Park which is our newest national park in New Zealand. And of course it is not immune to offenders. Some years back I remember DOC officers saw choppers fly away and it was suspected that they had some of our rare and native skinks and geckos in their possession yet there was little that DOC officers could do about it at that stage.Of course extending these powers is fantastic for our DOC officers. There is the power to intervene to prevent or stop offending and the Minister already talked about some of these things that could occur; the powerto remove illegally set traps when they reasonably suspect that offending is occurring; the power to stop a person—previously of course DOC officers could stop vehicles only when they suspected that there was some sort of offending occurring—the power to take further details like date of birth and identification; and then of course the power to seize further information to build a case. So this is an effective change to the Act and I absolutely support it in aid of these wonderful people who protect our wildlife.