Towards a more balanced conservation plan

Opinion: It was sobering to hear Conservation Minister Tama Potaka’s acknowledgement that New Zealand will need to prioritise which elements of our unique biodiversity we will manage. However, as the minister acknowledged, with only meagre funds, we can’t manage all biodiversity threats everywhere. Instead we must identify places where management can deliver the greatest gains – remaining places will presumably be ‘let go’, either through benign neglect or worse still, by divestment.
A careful review of New Zealand’s current biodiversity management would be a good place to start. The majority of our biodiversity funds across multiple organisations are currently committed to implementing Predator Free 2050, a strategy that aims to eradicate some introduced predators (rats, possums, mustelids, but not feral cats, mice or hedgehogs) across all of New Zealand by 2050.
Yes, Predator Free 2050 is delivering some gains. It has promoted strong public involvement in conservation, and delivered benefits for a number of predator-vulnerable species, particularly birds. However, there is significant concern in New Zealand’s conservation science community at the vanishingly small chances of achieving ‘eradication’ with current technology, the very lop-side biodiversity gains that the strategy would deliver, and our failure to serious consider alternative, more cost-effective strategies that better address the full range of our biodiversity goals.
Importantly, the Department of Conservation’s past decade of annual reports clearly document the impact that the pursuit of Predator Free 2050 has had on its conservation work. Its funding commitment to it has steadily increased over this period, while management of other major biodiversity pressures such as browsers and weeds has steadily reduced. That leaves many of our other threatened species, along with the ecosystems on which they depend, being left to slowly decline.  
In the light of this imbalance, it is clearly prudent for us develop a more balanced approach to our biodiversity management by undertaking work that addresses the full range of goals set out in our recently updated national biodiversity strategy. These goals recognise our need to protect not only a full range of our native species but also all of our various ecosystems, reflecting our international obligations as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
Such a reshaping of our biodiversity management would require careful consultation and coordination, given the number of players now carrying out significant conservation management. This includes not only DoC, but also our regional councils, Iwi, philanthropists, community groups, and private individuals. As well as requiring careful balancing of economic and social considerations, such a process would also benefit substantially from technical input from New Zealand’s conservation science community.
New Zealand has a rich legacy of contributing to advances in conservation science. For example, our expertise in the recovery of threatened bird species and the removal of pest species from islands is known globally. But that expertise also covers other fields, with New Zealand ecologists having once been at the cutting edge of thinking on the conservation of ecosystems. One notable contribution to this topic was made by Dr Geoff Kelly, who back in 1980 published a paper that identified key elements required for the systematic conservation of New Zealand’s ecosystems. His thinking had earlier played a key role in defining the purposes of the Reserves Act 1977.
Evidence for the forward-thinking nature of Kelly’s approach can be found in the inclusion of its key elements in ecosystem conservation manuals published recently by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and in a recent science strategy paper produced in support of the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity ecosystem conservation program. His work remains highly relevant to achieving New Zealand’s high-level ecosystem conservation goals.
Last year a group of us published results of a desk-top study for the Horizons Region (Whanganui-Manawatu) in which we combined Kelly’s framework with modern spatial analysis tools to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a robust, landscape-scale approach to ecosystem conservation.
Using recent satellite based mapping of land cover and a map of the potential distribution of ecosystems, we first analysed ecosystem losses since human settlement. Around two thirds of the region’s indigenous ecosystems have been cleared since European arrival, with greatest losses occurring in lowland environments well suited to agriculture. Perhaps the most tragic losses are the once extensive kahikatea-dominant forests of the Manawatu plains that have now almost completely disappeared.
Using conservation planning software, we then identified the most valuable surviving sites for conservation, based on their ability to represent a full range of the Region’s ecosystems. Selecting sites just within DoC-administered land greatly restricted the range of ecosystems that could be represented, reflecting the bias of this land to higher elevations. By contrast, conservation outcomes could be more than doubled by selecting the top 20 percent of sites regardless of land ownership. This second set included a number of council-administered or privately owned lowland sites that support surviving remnants of those ecosystems most at risk of total loss.
Results such as these provide a powerful example of the way that conservation science could contribute to better biodiversity outcomes when funding is limited. With appropriate institutional support, an analysis such as this could be readily implemented at a national scale. It could also be extended to consider the distributions of our threatened indigenous species, allowing exploitation of the synergies between ecosystem- and species-focused management. Social factors could also be included in the spatial planning process, eg to favour the selection of sites where community work is already underway, or to avoid sites particularly valued for recreational hunting.
Results could be used to inform dialogue between New Zealand’s various conservation actors aimed at developing a consensus around a portfolio of work that will collectively deliver the greatest biodiversity benefits as defined by our national goals. Management agencies such as DoC and regional councils could also use results to guide the allocation of resources across their own work programmes. Similarly, results could be used by funding agencies (DoC, regional councils, QEII Trust, philanthropists) to guide the allocation of funding to community groups wanting to carry out conservation work at high-value sites.
Last, an analysis such as this would also provide a robust framework within which to assess the conservation value of the various parcels of stewardship land held by DoC — land whose values were supposed to have been assessed decades ago, with the most valuable places given formal protection. Because that assessment was never completed, many of those stewardship areas are now at risk of destruction under the current Government’s fast-track legislation. Its values need to be rigorously assessed with urgency before Shane Jones’ Freddy the frog and his other native brethren are put at risk of permanent extinction.