Amid a call to “string ’em up” and a possible $300,000 fine, cooler West Coast heads just want a pair of fossil fossickers to hand back their ill-gotten gains
Karamea people are pinning their hopes on Māori to secure the return of a prized local landmark, the whale fossil gouged out of a local riverbed last month by chainsaw.
The 20-million-year-old piece of rock is still in police custody after officers accompanied by West Coast Regional Council compliance staff seized it from the home of the Greymouth fossil collector accused of taking it.
The man and his companion told horrified locals who tried to stop them that they were acting within the law by taking it.
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Both have since been served with abatement notices by the council warning them they breached the Resource Management Act and regional plan by using machinery to extract the ancient relic.
The orders effectively forbid them to do the same anywhere else in the West Coast marine environment.
The council’s still deciding whether to slap the pair with infringement notices and fines.
But it’s not clear that those penalties would defeat their claim to ownership.
In general, anyone can collect and own fossils on public land that’s not a reserve, although some types, including skeletal types, are defined by law as protected objects.
That means they can still be collected but can’t be exported without a permit.
Morally, the two fossil takers should have no claim, according to incensed locals, including Tom Horncastle.
“They ripped out a landmark that’s been the marvel of generations and they ignored our protests.”
New Buller regional councillor Frank Dooley raised eyebrows this week by declaring the two fossil-takers should be “strung up and quartered”.
“We’ve got to set an example of these people – you can’t just let them take the law into their own hands.”
Another collector, who recently pulled a fossilised rock out of a flood wall, should receive similar treatment, Dooley told fellow councillors.
Horncastle says he can’t go along with that.
“It’s not that bloody drastic. At least the abatement notices will stop them taking to other bits of the seabed with chainsaws.”
Council considers penalty
Council staff are considering more prosaic penalties, collating information the collector provided to the police, according to compliance manager Colin Helem.
“We haven’t had to deal with this sort of thing before and we want to be sure of our ground, so it’ll be next month before we take any enforcement action.”
“Enforcement” in regional council terms means an infringement notice and usually a fine, which under the RMA can be up to $300,000 or a prison term.
With that prospect dangling over their heads, the fossil-takers are under pressure from mana whenua to do the decent thing in the eyes of the West Coast community and hand over their prize.
Ngāti Waewae chair Francois Tumahai, who’s a member of the council’s resource management committee, has described the act as the desecration of a taonga.
He says he’s working with the collector to have the fossil returned.
“I’m all over him – and the other character,” he assured fellow councillors this week.
Horncastle says he’d like to see the fossil back in its riverbed hole – or on display at the Karamea information centre.
”I’m not that bothered as long as it comes back and those guys don’t get to make any money out of it,” he says.
Newsroom has asked Tumahai if the fossil collectors want money to return the fossil to Karamea but he has not so far responded.
Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism Fund
