Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill
This bill changes the rules around when the government can give permission for protected wildlife to be killed as a side effect of otherwise legal activities — like building roads or doing pest control. A court decision in early 2025 said the current law didn't allow this properly. The bill restores the ability for the Director-General of Conservation to grant those permissions, as long as the overall effect still protects wildlife populations. It also clears up the legal status of permissions that were already granted before the court ruling.
What this affects
Tap a topic to see how this bill touches it — with the parts of the text it’s based on.
The bill sets out when the government can allow protected wildlife to be accidentally killed during legal activities, as long as the overall effect still protects those species
the Director-General may grant an authority under that section that authorises killing of wildlife that is incidental to carrying out an otherwise lawful activity
Killing of wildlife is incidental if it is not directly intended but is unavoidable and foreseeable as a consequence of carrying out the lawful activity
The authority is to be treated as consistent with the protection of wildlife if, in granting it, the Director-General is satisfied that its overall effect would be consistent with the protection of populations of wildlife and individual wildlife
Progress through Parliament
Have your say
Submissions open once a bill reaches the select committee stage. In the meantime, you can write to your local MP about it.
Write to your MPBill text sourced from legislation.govt.nz (Parliamentary Counsel Office). Arapono’s summary and breakdown are drafted with AI grounded in that official text and reviewed by an Arapono editor for accuracy and neutrality before publishing. Arapono is non-partisan and takes no position on this bill.