El Rancho Poronui

when is public access not public access?

The Facts

El Rancho Poronui was bought from the Tuhoe Maori Trust Board in 1967 by an American company calling itself ANZAMCO, for a third of a million dollars. There are 37 shareholders in this company all of whom bar one, are Americans with an average shareholding of 24,000 shares each. The only New Zealand shareholder in the company is a solicitor from Hamilton and he has only a paltry 2000 shares. The principle shareholder is a Mr. Wendall Bird Mendenhall who lives at Poronui between frequent visits back and forth to the States. ANZAMCO has a registered capital of 1½ million dollars and the company have plans to develop Poronui into a 'dude ranch', with every facility for the rich American sportsman. Government regulations require that ½ of this property eventually be turned over to New Zealand ownership. Because of this the company plans to subdivide and sell half the land. They have 25 years in which to realise this regulation. Although Mendenhall stresses that the company is 'in no way or form associated with the Mormon church' at least ten of the shareholder including Mendenhall are residents of Salt Lake City. Mendenhall was himself formerly in charge of the church's world wide building programme end spent some time in Hamilton supervising building at Temple View. At El Rancho Poronui. the company plan to dam a stream to form a lake, set out a golf course and build individual cabins for the lodge. Already the 'ranch' as Mendenhall insists on calling it, breeds American quarter horses, Perendale sheep, and cattle, and has a meat export licence.

El Rancho Poronui and its American owners have raised the ire of many New Zealanders over the past few years. All 21.000 acres of the 'ranch' run up the Taharua Valley, one of the only easy access valleys into the Kaimanawa Forest Park. Trampers and shooters have been met with persistent hostility from Mendenhall & co. when attempting to pass through the farm to the mountains. However, apart from Mendenhall's private farm road, there is, in fact, a legal access road on the property for use of the general public. This 'paper' road up the Taharua was surveyed, pegged and gazetted in 1910 and designated a public highway under Section 110 of the 1928 Public Works Act. The road runs down the eastern side of the property parallel to the private Poronui road, but as yet is marked only by survey pegs. In theory this 'road' should provide legal access to the Kaimanawas, but it has taken seven years of legal wrangle with the El Rancho Poronui owners to enable this.

Mendenhall has said that locals wishing to fish and hunt in the Kaimanawas should use the Forest Service track that runs (parallel to the Taharua Valley but up a ridge and over the 4,000 ft. peak Te Iringa. This track is called the 'Gut Buster' and adds about ten hours to the time it would take normally to enter the Kaimanawas through Poronui.

Under Sections 145 and 146 of the 1928 Public Works Act. public roads through private property must not be barred with fences or gates. Applications must be made if gates are found to be necessary. If the application for gates is successful notices saying 'Public Road' must be displayed prominently on either side of the gates. ANZAMCO has stalled for seven years and done everything possible to deny local access to the Kaimanawas so that the 'ranch' may be kept unspoilt for American tourists. Quote Mendenhall: "There are some people who have no respect for the property rights of others, but they've learned pronto here, that they have to' (NZ Truth, May 1971). Mendenhall will not allow the New Zealand Forest Service to use his private road, but at one stage made concessions to the effect that permission may be granted if Forest Service employees could show they had the prior permission of the Head Office in Wellington. Forest Service surveyors who have gone in to re-survey the undeveloped legal access road since U.S. ownership of Poronui say that a station bridge crosses the Taharua River at the same point as the paper road and the airstrip and woolshed lie across the path of the paper road. Furthermore, 28 fences crossed the length of the road. Members of the public are entitled to use the paper road which the recent re-survey showed to be 40-60 ft. wide in some places. Federated Mountain Clubs visitors to have found that Forest Service survey pegs had been deliberately tampered with since the re-survey, making it difficult to know exactly where legal access was. When Mendenhall was questioned by the visitors about the deliberately misplaced marker pegs, he stated that the pegs used by the Forest Service re-survey party had been of untreated pine and had rotted off at ground level. R.B. Hildreth of the Deerstalkers Association has said that this was incorrect as all pegs were made of tanalised pine and in truth had either been broken off of pulled out. Ironically Mendenhall has said that police are called in when trespassers are found and stated "we have a full-time (boundary) rider who looks out for trouble.

Recent Deerstalkers Association attempts to drive up the Taharua Valley have been thwarted by El Roncho Poronui personnel.

Federated Mountains Clubs and the Deerstalkers Association have both been actively campaigning since 1970 for the rights of New Zealanders to use the legal access paper road through Poronui. On their visit to Poronui in 1971 they found that half of the 13 mile paper road could be easily developed, although bridges would have to be made over two streams. The remaining 7 miles of the paper road were initially obstructed by a 100 ft. pumice cliff that original surveying had not taken into account.

The New Zealand Deerstalkers Association decided to petition the Taupo County Council in 1973 calling for the removal of fences across the road as it is required under Section 146 of the Public Works Act. The Taupo County Council rejected the demand on the grounds that the fences on the Poronui paper road were no public inconvenience. As a result of the rejection of their petition the Deerstalkers Association brought a prosecution against the Taupo County Council for failing to act on the requirements that are clearly laid out in the Public Works Act. The prosecution was successful and the Taupo County Council duly found itself liable to serve notice on El Rancho Roronui requiring that all fences over the paper road be removed. This successful prosecution was a legal precedent in New Zealand.

In effect this amounted to little if any 'agreement'.

Since the Deerstalkers/ratepayers prosecution of the Taupo County Council, ANZAMCO has lodged an application with the Council to allow gates to be built across the Taharua road where the fences existed. In turn the Deerstalkers have lodged a formal objection to any erection of gates over the legal access road. Needless to say, survey pegs continue to be deliberately dislodged and a swede crop has been planted by the Poronui owners across a section of the road obliterating any remaining markers on that section of the road. Only half the fences over the total 13 mile stretch of the Taharua road have been removed and the Deerstalkers Association have been informed that the remaining fences will require another petition to the Taupo County Council before notice can be served for their removal. This was due to a lack of clarification in the prosecution case.

ANZAMCO complained that it would cost $30,000 to fence off the paper road if they could not put gates across their fences. But they knew a public access road existed through Poronui when they made transactions to buy the land and were fully aware of they risk they took in this instance.

It is obvious that such a large tract of land should never have been allowed to pass into the hands of foreign ownership in the first place. Vital public access to one of New Zealand's best hunting and fishing forest perks has been severely restricted by the nature of this particular incidence of foreign ownership of New Zealand land. The Poronui story reveals to New Zealanders that not only is it necessary to fight against cultural and economic exploitation of our land, as is shown by the actions of the Taupo County Council in this case. Legislation already exists that effectively protects N.Z. land from being bought up by 'overseas corporations'. But a loophole clause, vesting the Minister of Lands and Finance with power to ultimately veto that law, permits such sales of N.Z. land provided the sale can show it will be of "benefit to N.Z. agriculture in general". The two ministers who agreed to the sale of Poronui to ANZAMCO were Duncan Mclntyre (Land) and Muldoon (Finance). There is no doubt that multi-millionaire entrepreneurs such as Mendenhall of Poronui, and the Cannings of Koiro Farms Ltd., have had strange powers over former Ministers of Lands and Finance in succeeding with these land transactions that go against the spirit of New Zealand land law. Koiro and Poronui are not the only examples of such foreign ownership of land in N.Z. Takaro Lodge is perhaps one of the more recent examples. Cecil Peak and Walter Peak are others.

Mendenhall's activities at Poronui should be regarded as scandalous, even disregarding the fact that he is not a New Zealand citizen. Hopefully Mendenhall might have read a letter to the Editor of the Hamilton Times by R.O. Parker, Jan. 29 1971 which said: 'It is this subtle new form of colonialism which is making Americans the most disliked people on this earth. As the Vietnamese say: 'What need of enemies when we have friends like these?'