The government has released some of the background geologists reports on areas it wants to remove from the protection of schedule 4 and mine. The one on the Parakawai Ecological Area [PDF] makes interesting reading. It identifies the primary resource in the area as "aggregate". Yes, that's right - the government wants to dig up an ecological reserve for a shingle pit.
Aggregate is not exactly rare. Statistics New Zealand puts the total resource as "undefined, but large" - meaning we have enough to last us forever. So why would we want to dig up a protected area for it? There's plenty is less valuable parts of the country. It seems like pure ecological vandalism, driven by anti-environmentalist spite.
