A moth in the night

Otago Daily Times

27-05-2025

Of all the sounds of the night, few are as irritating as a moth bouncing and lumbering around a bedroom as it tries to find a chink of light in the darkness.
In its increasingly frantic flutterings to escape, it rebounds off the walls and ceiling and, horror of horrors, slaps you in the face or buzzes by your ear. Not once, but several times.
Elsewhere, Minister for Resources Shane Jones is also having a sleepless night. He's dreaming of giant snails, Freddie the frog and a host of protected birds holding up his latest big infrastructure project.
No darn creepy-crawly is going to stop my work from going ahead, he thinks. Mining and oil and gas developments are far too important for that.
But things are about to get worse for Mr Jones and his drive for success.
Enter a humble moth, the lyrically named Orocrambus sophistes . Not the same one blundering about above, but a relative nonetheless.
This rare and "nationally vulnerable" native moth has taken a nibble out of OceanaGold's Macraes mine plans with its recent discovery at Golden Bar, one of the three open pits the company wants to expand.
For the minister, this is the stuff of nightmares.
Just last week, Mr Jones was busy doing what he does best — acting as a provocateur in the House. On Budget day he showed off a small bottle of what he said was "Maui" oil and daring Green Party MPs to sniff it.
His braggadocio was founded on the announcement of $200 million set aside in the Budget to give the government the opportunity to buy a stake in new gas fields offshore.
Mr Jones also boasted that sum was potentially just the beginning, with a "tentative" agreement from acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop that more money could be made available.
Just a few days later, however, Mr Jones' bubble of hubris was popped by the news that the endangered moth, which lives in short tussock grasslands across parts of inland Otago and Canterbury, has become something of a fly in the ointment at Macraes.
The mining company has asked independent hearings commissioners if they can put its Golden Bar expansion proposal to one side, pending the outcome of an environmental report on the potential effects of the project on the moth.
In a memorandum to the commissioners, OceanaGold listed that the Department of Conservation, Forest & Bird, and Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, Te Rūnanga o Moeraki and Te Rūnaka o Otākou (collectively Kā Rūnaka) had all highlighted possible effects on biodiversity values from the expansion going ahead.
There was also a cultural impact assessment from Kā Rūnaka which highlighted concerns of how expanding Golden Bar might affect the moth, which had been found there at least once in recent times.
The company's submission to the commissioners that it reserved the right not to proceed with the Golden Bar part of the plan appears to have flummoxed them somewhat.
Commissioner Rob van Voorthuysen called it an "unusual proposition" not to have all the relevant reports and evidence on the table before the hearing.
However, the commissioners appear prepared to follow a different process, though cautioned it could lead to delays in the start of the hearing, planned for July.
It's worth remembering that this government recently amended, under urgency, the Wildlife Act to give the director-general of conservation the power to let companies remove native and endangered animals if they get in the way of major infrastructural projects.
In light of this worrisome move, it seems to us OceanaGold is going about this carefully and sensitively, putting the rare moth ahead of its expanding footprint.
What remains to be seen is how large or spread out the moth colony is, and whether its advised size might make any difference to the way the company pursues its Golden Bar plans.
In the meantime, it is good to see that not everyone appears to have the same arrogance and indifference to the environment, and to the flora and fauna which makes New Zealand unique, as Mr Jones does.