25A—Credit for environmental benefits
(i)
has achieved an environmental benefit (not being a
benefit required in relation to a consent to clear native vegetation or under
any other requirement under this Act); or
(ii)
has, in accordance with a consent to clear
native vegetation, achieved an environmental benefit that exceeds the value of
the minimum benefit needed to offset the loss of the cleared vegetation; and
(b)
the Council is satisfied that the benefit or excess benefit (as the case
requires) is of a significant value,
the Council may, for the purposes of this Act—
(c)
credit the person with having achieved an environmental benefit of a value
determined by the Council (whether monetary or otherwise); and
(d) take
into account and apply the value of the credit (adjusted to reflect the value,
in the Council's opinion, of the native vegetation the subject of the credit
at the time it is so applied) to—
(i)
an amount of environmental benefit the person must
achieve; or
(ii)
an amount of compensation proposed to be paid into
the Fund under section 28(4); or
(iii)
an amount to be paid into the Fund under any other
provision of this Act as an alternative to achieving an environmental benefit.
(2) In determining the
value of an excess benefit contemplated by subsection (1)(a)(ii),
the Council must have regard to the approximate difference between the value
of the environmental benefit achieved by the person and the value of the
environmental benefit that would, in the Council's opinion, have been the
minimum the person would have been required to achieve in the circumstances.