New Low Slope Map

Kia Ora Katoa

The first of the stock exclusion regulations in the National Policy Statement on freshwater management (NPS-FM) are set to come in for the 1st July 2023. The first level of requirements states that all dairy cattle and all beef cattle and deer that are break fenced or grazing on annual forage crops or irrigated pasture, be fenced to a minimum three meter setback from lakes and rivers with beds wider than 1m.
Table 1 shows more timelines laid out in the NPS-FM and states that for 1st July 2025 all dairy support cattle must be fenced from water bodies wider than 1m but all beef and deer must be fenced off from the waterbodies when the land is low slope as shown on MFE's low slope maps.
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Table 1: Timeline for stock exclusion as laid out in the NPS-FM 2020

There has been a lot of debate regarding the map which can be found at: 
https://mfe.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=f73222d33d224f1e8d513dae0f91c11d
 
by selecting Current Map in the layers list. One of the issues is that the Current Map was meant to capture land with a slope between 0-10 degrees however because this was done by averaging land across land parcels a lot of land captured that was greater than 10 degrees as well as issues with old property boundaries being used.
Industry bodies such as Beef and Lamb and Federated Farmers have been in ongoing discussions with the government who have now announced changes to the low slope map. The discussion has been around fencing of slopes that are 5-10 degrees and that a fence to exclude stock is not actually going to improve water quality as the issue for this land is overland flow. As well as undeveloped land of low intensity requiring fencing.
The government has recognised this and that a lot of land was unintentionally captured in the low slope map which belongs for instance to extensive high country stations and would have a large economic impact rather than an improvement in water quality (costs were estimated at $1.1 billion, $773 million in capital costs and $17 million per year in productivity losses 1.).
 
The proposed solution is two new maps, one showing land from 0-5 degrees which will still need to be fenced in accordance with the NPS-FM. Another map showing land from 5-10 degrees shows land that will no longer need to be physically fenced but for which stock exclusion from water ways will need to be managed through a Freshwater Farm Plan where appropriate. What these plans look like is being worked on by the government with consultation on them expected towards the end of the year.
The new 0-5 degree map also has a 500 m elevation cap on it and low slope land above this elevation is excluded so it does not need to be physically fenced and will also be managed through the freshwater farm plans. The new map excludes depleted grassland and tall tussock areas to insure that low carrying capacity areas with a low impact on water quality will not be negatively impacted.
 
The new maps were created using a method called local terrain averaging so instead of averaging land across land parcels in the new map land parcels will be applied at the end to show who is responsible for stock management. Local terrain averaging involves averaging the slope within a 4.5 hectare area which is comprised of multiple 15 x 15 m cells. Only land with an average slope of less than 5 degrees is selected and the edges of each cell are smoothed to give the map its boundary. In the discussion document released alongside the new map the government suggests that with this method only 0.07% of the land captured by the map is outside the desired slope range whereas in the current map around 11.5% was captured.
You can read the full discussion document here:
stock-exclusion-regulations-discussion-document.pdf (environment.govt.nz)
 
The government are accepting submissions on the changes from the 26th July till the 12th September. The changes will no doubt spark interest amongst various groups who may feel that the government is backing down on promises in the NPS-FM so it is very important that the farming community makes submissions on the proposed changes to support or suggest final alterations to make sure its voice is heard.
Submissions can be made using the link below:
consult.environment.govt.nz
 
Any questions just get in touch.
Nga Mihi,
Lumen


1. MFE, Stock exclusion regulations: Proposed changes to the low slope map. Discussion document, July 2021. Table 2 Estimated costs and benefits to regulated parties.