Interview: New Zealand's biodiversity crisis comes under national spotlight

Many of New Zealand's native animals are dying out an alarming rate and the country's conservation efforts are in crisis mode, a national conference will hear next week.

Government ministers and lawmakers from across the political spectrum as well as conservation experts will gather in Auckland for the three-day Wild Things conference to address the loss of the country's biodiversity.

The Environmental Defence Society (EDS), a not-for-profit organization of resource management professionals, has organized the conference as a "national conversation" to find a way forward.

EDS executive director and chairman Gary Taylor told Xinhua that New Zealand would have to make fundamental strategic changes in the way it managed its environment if the decline was to be stopped.

"The situation basically is that for the last 1,000 years since humans first came to New Zealand, indigenous biodiversity has been in a state of decline," Taylor told Xinhua in a phone interview Thursday.

"The principal reason for the decline of course is the clearance of forests, the drainage of wetlands and the introduction of pests and weeds that weren't here before people arrived."

While the recent intensification of dairy farming and its effects on lowland streams and rivers had made headlines, many of New Zealand's unique animals were in longer term decline.

"The New Zealand sealion is in a state of more rapid decline than at any time in human history so far as we can tell and there are a number of complex reasons for that," said Taylor.

"Maui's dolphin is reasonably static -- it's population at the moment around about 55 adults -- but set netting and trawling at the largest extent of its range still pose problems and it's now the most threatened marine mammal on the planet."

Efforts to restore native forests and to wipe out the introduced Australian possum had been stepped up, but not enough to stem an overall decline in New Zealand birdlife.

"The kiwi, New Zealand's national bird, at the current rate of decline, which is about 2 percent per annum, will be functionally extinct by mid-century if we don't turn that around," said Taylor.

The problem was a reputational issue for New Zealand with potential economic ramifications, particularly for the tourism industry.

"A lot of our product, including our international tourism, relies on the clean, green image and whilst New Zealand is a relatively clean, green place, there are still issues that need addressing and we're drawing attention to them," he said.

The country had to join up its efforts across various sectors " from agriculture to tourism to conservation and environment and also offshore with fisheries to look at a reset of how we manage our indigenous biodiversity."

That meant drawing "some environmental bottom lines" in the quest for economic development.

"Animals that have been here for 80 million years have a right to exist," said Taylor.

"We've come along as Johnny-come-latelies 1,000 years ago and have basically trashed their environment and it's time for that to stop and for us to recognize the intrinsic values that natural heritage has," he said.

There was a growing awareness among government agencies and political leaders that the current direction was "not good" and the government's Department of Conservation was engaging more with communities and doing restoration work.

Environment Minister Nick Smith and Conservation Minister Maggie Barry would be two of the speakers at the conference, and Taylor said he would be hoping to hear about resource management reforms and "more national direction on biodiversity such as through a national policy statement on biodiversity."

"I think one of the things that I'm looking for out of this conference, given that New Zealand's economy is now heading into surplus, is what you could call a conservation dividend -- a quantum increase in the Department of Conservation's funding that could be used to tackle some of the intractable problems around our species management," he said.

"I think that this conference is going to be important in terms of raising the profile of this issue and making New Zealanders aware that there's a problem and giving politicians a mandate to do something about it." Endi