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RNZ News
10-08-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Conservation funding dries up, threatening Waikato bird-protection projects
Left to right, Maryann Eason, Jude Tisdall, Tiaki Ormsby, Janet Leggett, Nardene Berry, and Jo Wrigley at Eason's farm homestead, with Maungatautari Sanctuary Mountain behind. Photo: RNZ/Libby Kirkby-McLeod Maryann Eason's Maungatautari farm homestead was on the edge of 'Bush to Burbs', a project to protect bird spillover from the Maungatautari Sanctuary Mountain. "Hanging out in the magnolia tree was nine kaka and four bellbirds and two tuis, and there were fantails flying all around," she said of the birds she now saw on her property. Eason had planted more than 800,000 trees on the farm and, with the neighbouring property-owner, worked on pest-trapping for the area to protect birds that leave the inland fenced sanctuary at Maungatautari. 'Bush to Burbs' was one of several projects between Pirongia and Maungatautari, which aimed to bring back endangered species and provide safe corridors for animals to travel the 45km between the two mountains. Another project - Taiea te Taiao - also helped private landowners return a pest-free bird friendly habitat across the area. Nardene Berry from Landcare Trust said some native birds wouldn't cross more than three kilometres of pastureland. "What we are trying to do is create stepping stones for the birds to cross the landscape in a way that they can do so safely," she said. The benefits weren't just for the birds. "What people forget is that we are part of nature," Berry said. "Biodiversity is part of us and we are part of it, so having that in our backyards or close by on our farms is so vital for our wellbeing." Tiaki Ormsby from Pirongia Te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society said the group's Matariki event was a good example of the benefits to people connecting with natural places. The group took whanau onto parts of Pironga to walk in the steps of their ancestors and find out about the ecology on the mountain. "To be able to go back on our maunga in a safe way, it was quite magical," she said. However, Berry said keeping these and other projects in Waikato would become harder. Government funding had dried up and philanthropic investment in biodiversity had halved to only two percent over the last few years. "Sometimes, projects can get started, and they get some funding to get going and there's stuff behind that, but to keep it going, that's the hard part," she said. Go Eco was the environmental group behind the Bush to Burbs project and chief executive Jo Wrigley agreed funding was currently difficult. She said there was a cycle of government funding that enabled projects, but didn't continue to help maintain them. "Every government wants to see environmental projects scaled up, but the funding is not usually scaled up," she said. An example was the billion-dollar 'Jobs For Nature' project, which the government stopped funding in June. Jude Tisdall is a long-time volunteer for Waikato environmental groups in her area. She said some projects, like pest control in the Kaimai Range, occur on steep, dangerous country and really should be undertaken by professionals. Jobs for Nature trained people to do that work, but she said many were young people who needed paid employment and, when funding went, so did skilled workers . Pirongia Te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society helped with pest-trapping on Pirongia, where blue-wattled kōkako were returned in 2017. Janet Leggett, who wrote many of the society's funding applications, said the group also had the vision to see kiwi back on the mountain, but finding funding had been become harder and harder. "The pool is shrinking," she said. "Our major funding sources are the government-funding sources, but the Department of Conservation hasn't been able to fund us for the last two years." The group received funding from Waikato Regional Council and other groups, such as Lotteries, but Leggett said they received less than half of what they applied for. Not just new projects could be affected. Leggett feared the progress already been made to reduce pests could also be reversed. "It's not going to take long for things to regress, and the possum and rat numbers to build up, and the birdlife to be affected," she said. "It's at a point now where it's really critical." Wrigley said, as funding contracted, progress had to rely on other things. "The work is ultimately kept going through relationships between whanau, hapu and communities," she said. The vision for restoring nature in Waikato was big. These groups just hoped that austerity in the funding sector didn't set back the progress. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Scoop
28-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Country Life: Dollars For Nature – Can Biodiversity Credits Fix NZ's Conservation Woes?
Country Life: What are biodiversity credits and how can they work for NZ?, for Country Life If mud and dead things aren't your thing but you still want trees planted, pests killed and wetlands to flourish, you could pay others to do the hard slog through biodiversity credits. Not to be confused with carbon credits, they are a way for private investors and corporations to pay others to save the skink or clean up sludgy streams and, in so doing, meet the expectations of a company's increasingly green customers. A biodiversity credit market is something the government has been perusing for a few years now, given limited public funds to pay for the huge costs involved in protecting and restoring nature. At Fieldays this month Associate Minister for the Environment Andrew Hoggard said farmers and other landowners were already doing their bit to protect biodiversity and wanted to do more. 'Supporting voluntary nature credits markets is a chance for the government to show them the carrot, not just the stick. 'We want to connect those caring for the land with investors who support conservation.' This week, Christchurch-based business consultancy Ekos launched its own biodiversity credit scheme, BioCredita, where investors can purchase bundles of credits to fund nature projects, including Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, a fenced eco-sanctuary in Waikato. The project, covering 3363 hectares, costs $5000 daily to run and is hoping to fund operations through credits or units priced at $12 each, representing the cost of protecting one hundredth of a hectare. The first buyer, according to Ekos' chief executive Sean Weaver, is a window manufacturer 'who liked the idea of selling biodiversity-enriched windows'. 'They can't do much biodiversity conservation in the factory, but they can support a nearby project, which is what they've done,' Weaver told Country Life. Follow Country Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. The Ekos credits are measured, independently verified and registered, and the project monitored to ensure operators do what they say they're doing, Weaver said. 'We've built a standard called the Ecos SD standard, which defines all of the things you need to do in order to demonstrate the benefits that you're delivering. And then we've built a registry, a digital registry on blockchain technology, so that these units can be issued once they've been verified to the standard, and then they can be tracked and traced across.' Weaver stresses the credits, unlike carbon credits, are not for use to offset damage to the environment. The Maungatautari project is among several pilot projects which the government is hoping to learn from. Others include a Silver Fern Farms project and Te Toa Whenua Northland which is transitioning around 100 ha from exotic forestry to native trees and includes pest control on iwi-owned land. Foreign funding for local projects A voluntary biodiversity credit market is just another tool for companies, both here and overseas, which want to fund New Zealand's conservation efforts, according to Hayden Johnston, GM for the Natural Environment at the Ministry for the Environment. 'We know that in New Zealand, companies are spending in the millions of dollars each year to keep up with either their regulatory requirements or claims that they want to make about their brands. 'I think people see New Zealand as a … country that has high credibility in the international space, and I feel really confident that we could be creating some really high-end premium products or credits to be offered internationally. 'One of the key questions we've always had is, you know, who is going to buy these things, and what do they want to buy?' Ekos' Sean Weaver said his scheme ultimately wants to attract foreign revenue to New Zealand which is seen as a hotspot for biodiversity. 'Imagine going to Europe and lassooing, I don't know, 10,20,30,40 hundred million dollars worth of demand from big actors in those economies so that we can create a fire hose of money to point at New Zealand conservation interests. That's really the goal here.' Greenwashing, commodifying nature? But what about criticism the credits could be another vehicle for greenwashing – companies exaggerating or misleading consumers about their green credentials? The integrity of biodiversity schemes is key, given the world's chequered experience with carbon trading. Already critics are flagging concerns around the nascent biodiversity credit industry, not just greenwashing – but scaleability, distaste at the 'commodification' of nature and the risk of distracting governments from their funding obligations. Johnston said the government hopes to develop 'guardrails' by following the pilot projects' experience. 'Principles like transparency, so that the buyer knows exactly what they're buying; additionality, so that what they're buying is clearly an additional benefit from what would have happened otherwise; longevity, so that the action or the outcome will occur over a longish period of time.' A central registry for the credits is something they will be considering too, he said. Weaver describes credits as a variation on philanthropy. 'Are they commodifying nature? No, they're not. They're commodifying the human labour and technology cost to look after nature. So no nature is being traded in these credits.' It's not a goldrush Johnston said biodiversity credits could work well for farmers and landowners working collaboratively, say, in catchment groups, to fund things like fencing and pest control. 'One of the things I'm really keen we test is how you can do this in a way that is cost effective. 'We know that examples of projects that are using international verification, for example, can be quite costly, and we want to find ways to make this an available tool in New Zealand for New Zealand circumstances.' Weaver said the Ekos credits, which are tradeable, should not be seen as a goldrush, but essentially a form of sustainable financing. 'Everybody in the value chain, in our programme has to make a profit, but nobody is allowed to make a super profit, like an unjustifiable super profit. 'The main reason for that is that the end-user of biodiversity credits is buying a conservation outcome, and they want to be confident that they're funding the true cost of looking after the place, and not funding, you know, somebody's super profit that will help them just buy another yacht.' 'Projects still need to go out and hunt for buyers, and our system is a new net to go fishing for that money,' Weaver said. Learn more:
