Fools Gold

Ecology

Central Otago has a unique and widely unknown landscape of biodiversity that exists nowhere else. Understanding the distribution abundance and relationships of life here, will help us to protect the biodiversity that is crucial to us having resilient ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems provide us with clean air and fresh water, which in turn provides us with climate regulating and livelihood stability.

The following slides provide you with a glimpse of some of the plant life present in the proposed mine area and along the Fools Gold road.

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“If this mine goes ahead, it will rip through fragile landscapes and put irreplaceable ecosystems at risk. The proposal sits within an Outstanding Natural Landscape (ONL), a conservation covenant, and is uphill and upstream of the Bendigo Wildlife Reserve.

We want to protect habitat for recovering drylands scrub, along with unique flora and Forna. -Six nationally critical species, one nationally endangered plant, one nationally endangered fish, and around 40 other vulnerable species. – Habitat for the rare moth Orocrambus sophistes. – Aquifers and waterways – from pollution.

If it goes ahead, it could set a dangerous precedent of opening all of Central Otago to destructive mining” – Forest & Bird.

An Outstanding Natural Landscape (ONL) in New Zealand is a distinct area land or water identified as “conspicuous, eminent, remarkable, or iconic” . Under Section 6(b) of the Resource Management Act (RMA), these areas are recognised as matters of national importance, requiring strict protection from inappropriate subdivision, use, and development.

A Conservation Covenant in New Zealand is a legally binding agreement between a landowner and an authority (such as the QEII National Trust, Department of Conservation, or local council) to protect natural, cultural, or historic features on private land in perpetuity. The landowner retains ownership, while the covenant is registered on the land title, remaining in place even if the property is sold. 

Statement of Evidence of Dr Geoffrey Rogers for the Terrestrial Ecology – submitted April 2nd 2026, to the expert panel – Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 – makes for sobering reading regards the proposed ecological rehabilitation of the proposed mine area. “Accordingly, I believe the lack of a revegetation paradigm for the uncompromising environment of the western Dunstan Range prevents the applicant from confidently predicting any measure of environmental remediation success.”

In summary, considerable risks attend the plan to rehabilitate ~500 ha of engineered landforms and soils in native vegetation within the DDF. Conceptually and methodologically the plan presents as an unchartered proposition, a prototype demanding a long and flexible period of plot-based trials driving adaptive learning rather than confidently predicting de novo reconstituted ecosystems. Even small-scale approximations to the compositionally diverse secondary plant communities (mixed grasses, herbs, shrubs) obliterated in the DDF will require a multi-decadal commitment to experimental research at trial size, spatial scales. Even then, I have low confidence that an adaptive paradigm to tolerate the environmental stress will emerge based on the lessons in vegetation rehabilitation over 35 years at Oceana Gold’s Macraes Mine. There, exotic grass pasture is relied upon to revegetate engineered landforms. Insights from the restoration of dryland vegetation by Otago community trusts that focus entirely on the lowlands, reinforces my judgement that revegetating the DDF surfaces is implausible. A further risk to a long-term experimental investigation of rebuilding a large dryland mountain slope is the expected 10-year life of the mine by a company with no Otago ancestry. – Dr Geoffrey Rogers April 2026.

There’s a lot more information coming to this page – keep returning to learn more – in the interim, below is some further information about a beautiful endemic moth which is Nationally Vulnerable – This moth resides in Central Otago and the proposed mining area.

Orocrambus sophistes: (…as time goes on fewer opportunities are available to secure suitable habitat for long-term conservation of this species.)

The female of the species is flightless.
Kōwhai – This tree 100’s of years old. These trees have suffered significant loss of habitat through past forest clearance for agriculture & now face their demise through proposed mining. “Locally, kōwhai are now scarce and those that remain are lone trees or small groves growing in isolation.” Rachael Baxter

It is proposed that this specific tree, will be buried and destroyed by the mining activities.