Forest and Bird calls for fast-tracked coal mining application to be declined

Forest and Bird are calling for a fast-tracked coal mining application to be declined after the Environmental Protection Authority found gaps in its conservation plan.

The EPA has sent a letter to mining company Bathurst asking for more information about its application to mine coal from Buller's Denniston Plateau .

It has asked the company to be more specific about how it would protect the area's wildlife, which includes protected lizards and insects.

"There were some shortcomings in their plan for lizards," Forest and Bird's regional conservation manager Scott Burnett said.

"The Department of Conservation's best practice for lizard management is to salvage more than 80 percent of the lizards from a site before development occurs. In Bathurst's application they expect that fewer than one percent of lizards can be feasibly salvaged, so that's a massive scale difference there.