Santana Minerals has put another $10 million on the table for Central Otago’s lizards as it tries to win fast-track approval for its Bendigo-Ophir gold mine, and the date for a final decision on the project has slipped from late October to January.
The Australian-listed miner, which is applying through its New Zealand subsidiary Matakanui Gold, made the offer in a response filed with the fast-track expert panel on 23 September. RNZ reported the offer on 25 September, describing the project as an open-cast mine in the Dunstan Mountains targeting a $4.4 billion gold deposit, in an area where an estimated 600,000 protected lizards live.
The money is meant to stand in for something the panel asked for and the company did not deliver. On 18 September the panel asked whether Matakanui Gold had considered a substantially larger fenced sanctuary to make up for the lizards that would be lost. Its existing plan offers two fenced sanctuaries at Bendigo and Battery Hill covering 81 hectares. The company’s own evidence put the expected growth in lizard numbers inside those sanctuaries at about 13 percent of the number that would be killed or displaced across the 610 hectare mine footprint.
In the response written by the company’s ecologists Dr Matt Baber, Dr Graham Ussher and Keith Barber, Matakanui Gold says it looked at larger sanctuaries on land it controls and in the wider landscape but did not find a site that met its criteria. Among the reasons given are poor habitat, difficult terrain for fencing, the practicality of securing land, and the fact that the best lizard country in the area often coincides with rock that may hold gold.
Instead the company is offering $10 million, which the ecologists say is roughly what it would cost to build and run a 140 to 150 hectare pest-proof fence somewhere in the wider landscape for 30 years. Their indicative breakdown is $5 million to build about 5.25 kilometres of fence at around $600 a metre, $2 million to clear the enclosed area of introduced mammals and confirm it is pest-free, and $3 million for maintenance, surveillance and weed control at about $100,000 a year over three decades.
The company has also offered to set aside about five hectares of wetland and stream-edge habitat for southern grass skinks, with livestock kept out and mice held to low levels. That would lift the number of the skinks that could be caught and moved before mining from about 800 to about 1800.
The ecologists are frank about the limits of what is being offered. They say the fenced sanctuaries and the funded fence together would come to about 221 to 231 hectares, still short of the roughly 250 hectare lower bound put forward in expert evidence by Dr Tocher. They also warn that the money only counts if the consent conditions tie it to specific species and outcomes, with Department of Conservation involvement and financial security for any unpaid balance. “Funding is an input, not an outcome,” they write.
The Department of Conservation remains opposed on the lizard question. In legal submissions dated 21 September, filed before the new offer, the department agreed the killing of hundreds of thousands of lizards was foreseeable but rejected the idea that it was unintended or unavoidable. “The applicant’s own evidence confirms that the deaths of many thousands of lizards could be avoided and that the mortality envisaged is directly intended as a consequence of the [Bendigo-Ophir Gold Project] proceeding,” the submission said, as quoted by RNZ.
The department’s lawyers argued that killing an estimated 590,000 absolutely protected lizards would not be consistent with the purpose of the Wildlife Act. They also said a separate biodiversity and heritage fund proposed by the company could not be relied on to benefit lizards, because trustees would decide each year how the money was spent.
The four southern Ngāi Tahu tribal groups taking part in the hearing, known together as Kā Rūnaka, said in their closing submissions that their evidence showed the proposed conditions could not adequately avoid or mitigate the effects on landscape, ecology, freshwater and cultural values. They also said the plans for managing the tailings dam after mining ends were deficient on both governance and funding.
The timetable has moved as well. When Santana brought a reporting deadline forward in July, the panel’s decision was due by 29 October. The company then asked for processing to be suspended from 31 August and resumed on 14 September. In Minute 52, issued on 16 September, panel chair Matthew Muir KC confirmed the restart and set a new date. The panel’s final decision is now due on 20 January 2027, provided there are no further suspensions. RNZ reported a draft decision was expected before Christmas.
The panel is still asking questions. On 25 September it sent the company a further request for the raw data from every lizard survey done so far, including sites where no lizards were found, with a deadline of 29 September. The ecologists say the new commitments will be written into updated consent conditions to be filed alongside the company’s closing submissions on 28 September. A Santana spokesperson told RNZ detailed responses to the other parties’ submissions would be filed in due course.
For investors the stakes are plain. Bendigo-Ophir is Santana’s main development project and the company has already cleared the overseas investment hurdle. Every month of delay pushes back first gold, and a larger conservation bill adds to the cost of getting there. The fast-track law was meant to shorten exactly this kind of process, yet an application lodged on 31 October 2025 is now heading for a decision roughly 15 months later.
Lizards are turning into a recurring test for mining under the fast-track regime. This week Bathurst’s bid to mine coal on the Denniston Plateau was sent back as incomplete, partly over lizards. How the Bendigo-Ophir panel weighs a cash offer against a known loss of hundreds of thousands of protected animals is likely to shape how other miners approach the same problem.
Is a $10 million fund a fair trade for the lizards that would be lost, or should the panel insist on a bigger sanctuary before a gold mine goes ahead? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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