Marginal strips and riparian land management

Abstract

In New Zealand strips of land adjacent to seashore, lakes, rivers and streams, have been reserved to the Crown under successive Land Acts and local authority legislation. Under early land legislation the strips were surveyed as road-lines, and were known as "road reserves". The terms "chain strips", or the "Queen's chain" also became widely adopted, in recognition of their width, and owner.2 Current arrangements for the reservation of these strips of land are through the Local Government Act 1974, that enables the taking of freehold and Maori land as esplanade reserves, and the Land Act 1948, that reserves from sale any Crown land adjacent to water.3 Under the Conservation Act 1987 these categories of reserved land are denoted as "marginal strips" and are to be managed as conservation areas.4 In this paper the term "marginal strip" refers to situations where the earlier terminology would normally apply.