I think the last point says it all. How could any reasonable...

I think the last point says it all. How could any reasonable person (outside the legal profession) take the Forest, Bird and Freaks society seriously?

Bathurst hopes to be mining by year end if agreements on environmental mitigation and protection are finalised by next Friday, work on the Escarpment coal mine site could start by July.

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Bathurst Resources hopes to be mining coal off the Denniston Plateau, inland from Westport, by the end of this year, as long as environmental groups don't appeal an Environment Court ruling upholding the company's resource consents.

The company's chief executive, Hamish Bohannan, told a briefing on the court decision that if agreements on environmental mitigation and protection were finalised by next Friday, the court-established deadline, road-making could be under way on the Escarpment mine site by July.

By September or October, the company could be mining rock and overburden covering the high quality coking coal resource on the plateau, to be "in coal" by the end of the year.

Production volumes would be restricted for as long as it took Bathurst to gain consents from the Environmental Protection Authority for a ropeway system to carry coal off the plateau.

Coal would be trucked down in the interim, but the company has ultimate plans to be producing four million tonnes of coal a year off the ecologically significant area, which sits on Department of Conservation land

Construction on the ropeway could start in November or December.

However, if the Royal New Zealand Forest & Bird Protection Society further appealed the decisions from the Environment Court, a further delay of "four to six months" was likely, Mr Bohannan said.

He had initially hoped to be mining at Escarpment by the end of 2010, but did not receive resource consents until August 2011. Then they were appealed by Forest & Bird and the West Coast Environmental Network.

Escarpment would be mined for four to five years.

Among Bathurst's commitments for environmental remediation is the carve-out of a 745 hectare protected area which would be protected "from the ravages of open-cut mining, quote unquote," Mr Bohannan said.

He criticised the fact the protected area had first been identified in the late 1980s, a report recommending protection had taken until 1998 to produce, and "more damningly, here we are in 2013 with dotted lines on plans suggesting protection".


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