QEII National Trust prepares to dramatically scale back work

RNZ News

18 hours ago

The Remarkables Station near Queenstown is protected with a QEII covenant - having been gifted to the QEII National Trust in 2022.
Photo:
Supplied
Landowners are being told their requests for help conserving precious native land may have to wait, as the QEII National Trust faces a funding crunch.
The conservation organisation said it would have to dramatically reduce the number of new covenants it was protecting across the motu from next month, when the Department of Conservation's Jobs for Nature funding ran out.
Makarora resident Gary Charteris was among the thousands of landowners who have protected pieces of wetland, grassland or forest under a QEII covenant since 1977, to prevent it ever being developed, cleared or subdivided.
Charteris said he wanted to ensure his beloved 30 hectares of pasture, beech forest and native mistletoe would never be sliced up or sold.
"At some stage in the future, someone, some property developer, might decide to develop it and subdivide it and build little houses all over it. And I wanted to prevent that," he said.
He said the process was straight-forward and - with the addition of a walking track last month - gave everyone a chance to enjoy the land.
"I've lived here for 40 years and I've had a lot of enjoyment out of just wandering through the bush, and I can't see why other people can't," he said.
For each covenant, the Trust helped out with the legal paperwork, survey costs and boundary fencing, and offered advice for pest control, weeding and long-term land care.
Despite strong demand for new covenants - with waitlists in some regions - QEII National Trust chief executive Dan Coup said the Trust was preparing to dramatically scale back its work.
The Trust relied largely on government funding, and its budget was set to shrink.
It protected 141 new covenants in 2024, 153 in 2023, and 170 in 2022 - but next year could look a little different, Coup said.
"Next year we will be lucky to be able to do a quarter to a third of the number of covenants we have done over the last few years. So it does mean that there's going to be quite a number of more people that we're going to be turning away or at least saying we can't afford to help you right now," he said.
The Trust received annual funding of just over $4.27 million.
In February, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced a new
$4.5 million funding package
over three years.
But that coincided with another key funding source coming to an end - the Jobs for Nature programme, funded by the government and administered by the Department of Conservation.
It gave the Trust $8 million over four years, from 2021.
Coup said the Trust would soon have just a little more than it needed to cover its core operations and support existing landowners.
Environmental Defence Society chief executive Gary Taylor - a former QEII National Trust director - was appalled.
"I think I think it's ridiculous that QEII is struggling on around about $5 million a year. It should be on $25 million a year and then it would be able to do proportionately a lot more and and do it in a way that's consistent with the government's overall political philosophy and direction," he said.
Coup said the Trust had been looking at ways to avoid cutting back on new covenants.
"We're obviously talking to officials and politicians as much as we can, and crowdfunding," he said.
"We think this is a really effective investment of Crown money to improve both biodiversity but also ecosystems service outcomes for communities."
Taylor believed crowdfunding and bequests wouldn't cut it.
"I think there's a lot of demand on philanthropic and private investment in conservation at the moment. DOC itself is looking to bulk up its revenue sources with philanthropic support. There's only so much that philanthropy can do," he said.
"This is something that requires so little additional funding to make it really roll that we should look to government to support. We could take $25 million out of Shane Jones's $200 million for oil and gas and that would give us something meaningful."
In a statement, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka reiterated his support for the trust and its important mahi protecting landscapes and ecosystems.
Asked if the government would consider additional funding for QEII, he said like with many other important conservation projects, further budget investments would be "considered in due course."