Govt seeking business and philanthropic boost for predator-free policy

The government is seeking funding from businesses and philanthropists to support its "aspirational" policy, announced today, to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050.

In a bid to shore up its environmental credentials, a phalanx of ministers led by Prime Minister John Key launched the policy this afternoon at Wellington's predator-free fenced bird sanctuary, Zealandia, pledging $7 million a year in new funding for each of the next four years and a series of interim goals, including a 20,000 hectare, unfenced predator-free zone on the New Zealand mainland by 2025.

The policy will be advanced by a new Crown agency, Predator-Free NZ Ltd, which will be established both to pursue eradication and to coordinate the fundraising and scientific efforts required to bring the vision to life.

PFNZ will have a board of directors made up of government, private sector, and scientific members, "to work on each regional project with iwi and community conservation groups and attract $2 of private sector and local government funding for every $1 of government funding," ministers announced.

The hope is that a combination of people power, improved, lower cost trapping techniques, and new technologies such as breeding for infertility and the use of targeted sound and light deterrents can rid areas of pests that prey on New Zealand's native birds, lizards and insects, which are uniquely ill-equipped to combat predators that did not exist in nature before human habitation in the last 1,000 or so years.

Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said it would be essential also to continue using 1080 poison, the controversial primary method of pest control used by the Department of Conservation to poison rats, mice, stoats, ferrets, possums and other introduced predators destroying New Zealand's native bush and fauna.

However, it was possible to see a "1080-free future", she said, while acknowledging the goal of a predator-free country in 34 years' time represented a huge challenge and that $28 million of initial funding was no more than "a good start".

Four key 2025 goals of the project are: an additional 1 million hectares of land where pests have been suppressed or removed through PFNZ partnerships; development of a scientific breakthrough capable of removing at least one small mammalian predator from New Zealand entirely; demonstration that areas of more than 20,000 hectares can be predator-free without the use of fences; and complete removal of all introduced predators from offshore island nature reserves."

(BusinessDesk)

Get full access to the NBR Rich List 2016, released July 28, by claiming your free 30-day trial to NBR ONLINE premium content at NBR.co.nz/free