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Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for the invitation to be here today.

You have gathered to celebrate 20 years of integrated conservation management in New Zealand, and to debate and discuss the challenges that lie ahead in protecting and preserving our natural heritage.

I’d like to congratulate the University of Waikato and the Department of Conservation for this initiative. Looking forward is enormously important in an area like conservation, where time is not on our side, and the plight of too many species continues to worsen.

For my part, I would like to give you a broad overview of where I think conservation has got to in New Zealand, its social context, and some of the new opportunities that are just now evolving. I also intend to make an announcement today that I think is very pertinent to this conference.

In speaking, I am mindful that Al Morrison, DOC’s director general, is going to give you a much more detailed run-down of the conservation world later. As a consequence, my comments shall be more brief.

Let’s begin.

From my point of view, conservation is in very good heart at this point in New Zealand’s history.

As a movement, it is very popular.

As a practise, it has never been so well resourced.

And as a political portfolio, it has never got so much attention.

To top things off, all the signs I see suggest that within New Zealand society, conservation as a set of values is only going to grow stronger still.

Let me expand on these points.

It is a little known fact that in the past seven years, funding for Vote Conservation has risen 68 per cent, from $190m in 1998/99 to $319m in the most recent Budget. Funding specifically for biodiversity restoration has increased 50 percent to $135m.

It is easy to underestimate the impact this additional funding has had on the conservation sector.

First, it has enabled DOC to lift its horizons and really push the boundaries in biodiversity management.

Second, it has markedly increased the amount of land protection that has taken place. More than 370,000 hectares have been added to public conservation lands over the past seven years.

Thirdly, it has increased progress in and advocacy for marine conservation. Some 17 marine reserves have been announced since 1999, and there is now an inclusive, regional process for creating more in the future.

And finally, the extra funding has inspired an explosion in the number of community groups and Maori active in conservation.

It is estimated that there are now some 3000 community-led conservation projects in New Zealand, and some 6000 private projects. About 800 have received direct government funding over the past seven years from a dedicated pool of $16M for conservation on private land.

There has also been active support by the Government for the protection and restoration of Maori land in particular. During my term in office, the Nga Whenua Rahui fund has achieved legal protection of around 47,000 hectares, at the request of the owners. Another 17,000 hectares are under negotiation. 96,000 hectares are under sustained pest control supported by the fund.

As Maori have completed Treaty settlement processes, their focus has turned towards the management of the resources important to them, and there are numerous restoration projects focused on not only Maori land but also taonga on public lands –titi, kereru/kukupa, eels, and so on.

These projects amplify the conservation work government agencies do by combining private resources with public ones. They also provide avenues for the public to participate in hands on conservation, and help build stronger conservation values.

In many respects, the growth in community conservation marks the blooming of seeds planted by New Zealand’s early conservationists; those who fought the battles of legend, such as Manapouri.

But this growing support cannot be taken for granted. It must continue to be fostered and strengthened as we move forward because it is going to be absolutely critical to tackling some of the looming challenges in conservation.

To illustrate why, I thought I would dwell for a moment on the stage I think we have reached in the management of terrestrial biodiversity on public land.

As many of you will be aware, New Zealand has become a world-leader in the eradication of pests from islands. As Sir David Bellamy put it: “New Zealand is the only country which has turned pest eradication into an export industry”.

There have been over 220 successful eradications of 17 different alien mammal species from our offshore islands, including the massive project to eradicate rats from the 11,000 hectare Campbell Island.

The sanctuaries which these islands become when the pests are gone have formed the backbone of New Zealand’s species restoration work for decades. The difficulty we are now grappling with is how to apply the lessons we have learned on islands to the mainland areas of New Zealand, and how to return the species we have safely sequestered on island sanctuaries back to areas where people actually live?

We’ve begun developing techniques to achieve these goals in small discrete mainland islands, and New Zealand’s five Kiwi sanctuaries. Over the past few years, scientific research has given us confidence that we can expand our pest control techniques over the larger and larger areas. We’ve trialled these techniques in Operation Ark, an initiative that seeks to control rat and stoat plagues during beech-masting over areas as large as 20,000 hectares, much bigger than any mainland island.

The results have been highly successful. Operation Ark has seen the mohua bird count in the Landsborough Valley increase 50 birds a year for the last five years.

Importantly, the extent of funding available has allowed the development of techniques that have driven down the costs of pest control dramatically. Efficiencies have been identified that have seen the sowing rates and associated costs for aerial 1080 drop by 70 per cent over the past thirty years.

What does this mean?

It means that we are now at an important jumping off point in terrestrial biodiversity conservation. We have the knowledge and techniques to begin expanding the areas we actually conduct pest control in.

At present, we are managing stoats, rats and possums on only a small percentage of conservation land. Imagine if we were doing so over 70 to 80 per cent. Imagine the recovery in our species if we coupled this with private efforts on private land.

Achieving this vision obviously requires resources, and I’ll return to that issue later. But even with resources, a significant increase in the scale of pest control work on public conservation land remains limited by public support.

At present, our most cost effective and efficient pest control tool is 1080. There is nothing else that comes close. But as all of you will be aware, there remains a vigorous public debate about 1080 use, one that will intensify sharply if we significantly increased the scale of pest control tomorrow.

We must continue to work towards resolving this debate as much as possible. The Environmental Risk Management Authority’s review of 1080 may help in this process. But ultimately we must also recognise that people are only going to support greater pest control in future if there is a reservoir of support for conservation that overwhelms any residual anxieties they may feel about 1080-use. Or, for that matter, any other piece of new technology that we discover to replace it.

For this reason, promoting conservation and fostering public support is an area that DOC and I have focussed a lot of time on over the past few years. Supporting and celebrating community conservation projects through which members of the public can participate in conservation is just one example. Initiatives to promote recreation in the outdoors and the economic value of conservation are others.

It has always been my view that conservation and recreation are intimately entwined. People develop a love of nature and an appreciation for its complexity and fragility by experiencing it. The more time someone spends walking in native bush or biking in high country landscapes, the more likely they are to advocate for the preservation of those places.

So the trends that are occurring in outdoor recreation are critically important to the future of conservation. The choices that will have to be made and the public expenditure necessary to preserve much of our biodiversity in the future will only be achieved by maintaining links between urban populations and the outdoors through recreation.

In recognition of these issues, the Government made the largest single investment ever in New Zealand’s outdoor recreation infrastructure in 2002, some $349 million over 10 years. Last year, we also held an Outdoor Recreation Summit to explore recreation issues in more detail, and SPARC has now embarked on the development of an outdoor recreation strategy.

At the same time, we have sought to blunt some of the friction points between conservation practise and recreation groups, particularly hunters. I have spent a great deal of time meeting with the hunting community. I’ve approved the use of deer repellent in recreational hunting areas, and in partnership with United Future, I have also created a new expert panel to sort through the conflicts involved in the management of deer, tahr, chamois and pigs.

All of this is designed to gradually deepen the public support for conservation across generations so we can tackle the challenges of the future.

But, as I indicated earlier, there comes a point when we must also recognise that the next steps we take in conservation will require more resources.

The resources the government puts in to conservation will grow as our economy grows provided the Labour-led government remains in power. There is clear evidence of this occurring over the past seven years, and my expectation is it will continue.

Resources can also be drawn from the community through volunteer time, community fundraising, use of private land, endowments and donations. As the number of projects shows, this too is developing quickly.

But there is also a third area of resources that I want to discuss in some detail today – corporate sponsorship.

There has always been a degree of corporate sponsorship in conservation. Some corporate sponsorship has benefited work undertaken by DOC, some has gone to community conservation groups.

The Bank of New Zealand’s sponsorship of kiwi conservation, and Comalco’s sponsorship of the Kakapo programme are two longstanding and celebrated examples.

To a certain extent, this sponsorship has been altruistic. While it has had commercial spin-offs for the brand of the companies concerned, it has largely been about giving something back to the environment.

This is changing, very rapidly.

It is changing because of climate change.

The shift in public concern about climate change, and the likely regulatory response by governments around the world, is creating new, very real, commercial imperatives for the corporate community. As a result, they are now searching for ways to off-set carbon emissions, and demonstrate their commitment to sustainability.

Some among you may regard this with some cynicism. Fair enough, but I see this trend as a massive opportunity for conservation.

In the past year, the pool of resources available for corporate sponsorship of conservation programmes in New Zealand has got much larger. DOC is now being approached by companies with many millions to invest, and I am determined that conservation will make the most of this.

Today, I am announcing that the government has approved the development of six pilot projects to store carbon on public conservation land.

A competitive tender process is to be run by DOC in which carbon storage opportunities on conservation land will be tendered off to commercial investors for the benefit of both parties. The contracts will run for two years, and a reassessment will then be made of their value.

We envisage two kinds of projects. The first will involve the replanting or the regeneration of native forests on land, which was not in forest prior to 1989, thus making these measures Kyoto compliant.

The second set of projects will look at areas where major pest control initiatives can be carried out on conservation land to measure and assess increases in carbon storage, both through the removal of pests which may emit methane and through increased growth in shrubs and trees with the pests gone.

While pest control measures are not Kyoto compliant, they can be traded on the international ‘grey market’ and they do comply with the ultimate objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The benefits for DOC are that important areas of conservation land, which are not currently targeted, can in future be intensively managed with the injection of private sector funding. The benefits for the investors are that these projects can help them make a real contribution to reducing their own carbon footprints.

In a separate initiative, the Ministry for the Environment and the Department of Conservation are also examining the use of public conservation land as an offsets regime to assist Government departments in achieving their goal of carbon neutrality.

I am really excited about these developments. I think they offer real promise of a win win for conservation and business in New Zealand. If the pilots are successful, they could turbo charge what we might otherwise have been able to achieve in the restoration of our native species.

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to join you today, and I hope the discussions that take place during your conference are fruitful.

 

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