Minister foreshadows hard choices for Conservation Department
Date: 14th June 2024
DoC will pull back from some areas but focus more keenly on others, the minister says, while seeking external partners and investors
Minister foreshadows hard choices for Conservation Department (msn.com)
This article provides an insight into the significant challenges that DOC is facing. More than ever, we need to continue our collective efforts to support the hard working and dedicated DOC staff who work in the wilding space but also in all aspects of conservation.
Waihopai Management Unit Marlborough June 2024 Photo inserted in post: Jo Ritchie
Divesting conservation assets is firmly on the table, as Conservation Minister Tama Potaka reveals his expectations for the financially stressed department.
Covid-19 lockdowns sent the Department of Conservation (DoC) into a financial tailspin while, at the same time, it was also struggling to deal with a maintenance backlog of huts, tracks and structures.
In its ministerial briefing last November, the department said a review of its financial sustainability “confirmed that the current size and scale of DoC is unaffordable on current baselines”. As part of wider public sector cuts, it’s now laying off staff, and not filling vacancies.
Speaking at the Environmental Defence Society conference in Ōtautahi/Christchurch on Tuesday, Potaka painted a picture of a stretched department – buffeted by storm events, and a torrent of tourists and invasive species – looking after a third of the country with about 0.44 percent of the Government’s budget.
All the while, nature was in decline, with more than 4000 native species currently threatened or at risk of extinction. (New Zealand has the highest proportion of threatened indigenous species in the world.)
“At the moment it’s not fiscally sustainable,” Potaka said of his department.
He had set four priorities, including: prioritising its most important work on high-value conservation areas and species, attracting investment, getting a grip on costs, and working with others.
That required being ruthless with its focus, he said, “and will result in doing less in some areas and focusing more on others”.
“We must be certain that we’re putting our limited resources into the things that matter most, and being clear about our priorities based on evidence-based arguments that focus on co-funding, partnering, devolution and, where suitable, divestment.”
(Critics of the moves will compare what’s proposed with the department’s drive for corporate partnerships, and involving community groups more in conservation work, under former director-general Al Morrison.)
The minister’s speech confirms potential closures and divestments by the department, which Newsroom’s reporting foreshadowed more than a year ago.
After his speech, Potaka told Newsroom the department couldn’t do as much as it wanted to. “The challenge we’re going to have is if we don’t make choices now, we’ll just fall further and further back.”
Partnering with groups such as the Backcountry Trust and Deerstalkers Association to maintain huts “might be an option”, he said.
DoC’s plans would be revealed to the public over time, the minister said – “over the next two years” – including speeding up concession processing times and providing more certainty to applicants.
Nicola Toki, chief executive of conservation group Forest & Bird, says the Government is stuck in a mindset of scarcity; that conservation is an extra cost, when it’s actually the engine room of the country’s economic prosperity.
“It’s exhausting and really underwhelming to see another example of a minister, and a department, who are scraping around looking for coins down the side of the couch.”
Environmental Defence Society chief executive Gary Taylor says Potaka’s initial stance on cuts and prioritisation – “whether we might have to abandon some species to extinction” – appears to have softened.
There’s a huge opportunity for DoC to increase revenue sources, he says, particularly for concession holders who get to use public conservation land “for a song”.
Potaka told the EDS conference DoC’s visitor network must be maintained, but the cost of replacing and repairing huts, tracks and structures was increasing.
That wasn’t just because of inflation and the rising cost of materials, but because of damage caused by more frequent extreme weather, like Cyclone Gabrielle, fuelled by climate change.
Potaka said DoC estimated it only had the capacity to look after 70 percent of the visitor network.
“We have to be a bit more innovative and novel when it comes to generating and activating inflows and resources for the mahi that we do on the conservation estate and enabling kaitiakitanga [guardianship and protection].”
Biodiversity work was important, because climate benefits and resilience, such as flood-slowing wetlands and carbon-absorbing forests, could be derived from healthy ecosystems,
Investments in “win-win” solutions may include planting more trees on the public conservation land, he said.
“We’ve got several hundred thousands of hectares that we could plant more trees on.
“I know there’d be views about which trees, and where, but certainly that seems to be a win-win solution not just for biodiversity but also for climate change and generating more economic upside for the conservation estate.”
The department would advise the minister on its priority preferences, and the trade-offs involved in choosing certain options over others.
Speaking earlier in the day, DoC director-general Penny Nelson said the department’s next climate plan would weigh the risks and opportunities for nature.
“For example, if we’re going to plant a whole lot more pines, particularly on public land, we have to look at what is the value of the benefits against the already existing $4 billion liability we’ve already got for wilding pines.”
After the cut to its baseline budget, the department was developing a new framework to help determine which species and ecosystems were the most important.
The department was assessing more than 1000 native terrestrial species to see which are most vulnerable to climate change, with results due in the coming months.
“We’re also starting to develop up an investment portfolio. Once we’re clear on where some of those key areas are we’re going to have a prospectus, so for others who want to invest in nature we’ll be clear on where we think matters.”
(Last year, DoC and the Ministry for the Environment consulted the public on a biodiversity credit system, aimed at encouraging landowners to protect, restore and enhance native ecosystems.)
“Managed retreat” was being considered by DoC.
Nelson specifically mentioned storm-damaged Cathedral Cove walking track, in the Coromandel, saying: “In 20 years’ time, I think there’s a real question whether there will even be any track in that area, given what we’re seeing.”
Projections of pest populations were being done, and “it’s pretty scary”, she said.
“There’ll be 50 percent more rats in some areas by 2090 under moderate climate change scenarios. There’ll be 40 percent more wasps’ nests lasting through the winter season, and the tools that we have at the moment, that we use in conservation, just aren’t cutting it.”
Browsing animals – such as deer, goats and possums – had to be tackled. Monitoring showed goats and deer had spread to more sites. “Their abundance has doubled between 2013 and 2021.”
An unexpected interruption to the conference programme on Tuesday happened when activists from School Strike for Climate and Climate Liberation Aotearoa interrupted the speech of Climate Change Minister Simon Watts.
Watts exited mid-speech, and didn’t return, after protestors approached the stage, and unfurled banners. They accused his National Party of favouring short-term profits and greed as the world moved closer to climate breakdown.
Returning from an early lunchbreak, Taylor, the EDS chief executive, told conference-goers while his organisation supported the protestors’ sentiment, the society’s preferred approach was to have a “proper conversation” with all sides.
It was difficult to get ministers to speak at the conference, he said, and he didn’t want to give them an excuse not to attend.
He added: “Fifty years ago that might have been me. I don’t feel any ill-will towards those young people.”
Endless landscapes and alpine regeneration – Waihopai Management Unit June 2024. Photo inserted in post by Jo Ritchie.
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