What the future could look like…………

Date: 21st October 2022

John Oswald, Ket Bradshaw and Hayley McCairns from the South Marlborough Landscape Restoration Trust on the aptly named Blowhard Road with the Branch Leatham catchment behind. Photo: Jo Ritchie

Richard Bowman WPN Chair and our coordinator presented to the NETS (national biosecurity) conference in Christchurch in August 2022.

The presentation was on the role of advocacy in a landscape scale biosecurity response but although that was a key focus of our talk neither of us are very good at staying on subject and we strayed into funding. I thought I would share a potential scenario from Richard if we cannot sustain national funding at least to current levels…

The point being made here is that we have let the tiger escape before. Funding for the Tb programme was reduced part way through the programme and it cost significantly more to catch that tiger again when funding at required levels was reinstated.

Our end message for the NETS talk was that we must have a truly integrated animal AND PLANT pest management approach if we are to ever really bring back the natural symphony that is the abundance of New Zealand’s unique biodiversity in a pest free landscape.

We need to all work together as hard and smart as possible to ensure this does not happen to the wilding programme. Get in behind the SUSTANING THE GAINS ADVOCACY PROGRAMME.

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