3 - The New Zealand Case: are relative emphases of CBD commitments different here compared to overseas?

3.1 - New Zealand's unique biodiversity

The special nature of the New Zealand situation derives mainly from our unique biotic assemblages and an astonishingly high degree of endemism. For example c. 93 percent of currently described beetle species are endemic22. Beetles are deliberately used in this introductory example because they provide about 50 percent of the insect species in New Zealand, and insect species provide the overwhelming majority of terrestrial genetic variety in the world23. Thus the great majority of terrestrial biodiversity in the world is present as beetles. Not only are most of our species only found in New Zealand, their uniqueness is reflected in endemic classification at a 'high' phylogenetic level. Endemism of New Zealand's beetles frequently occurs at a subfamily and even family level, reflecting their very distinct morphology, behaviour and ecology. The generally high endemism of the New Zealand biota is a result of the early separation from Gondwana, the subsequent long period of isolation from other landmasses and the relatively very recent arrival of humans.

Knowledge of New Zealand's biotic uniqueness carries with it an obligation for its enlightened stewardship. Although some introduced biota may carry genetic strains different from those in their country of origin, measures of phylogenetic biodiversity developed by Vane-Wright et al. (1991) clearly emphasise that conservation of the New Zealand endemic fauna is the most appropriate response to the current global loss of species diversity. Lest this be seen as ignoring production systems, it should be noted that some of the most important historical pests, as well as their most promising potential biocontrol agents are part of the native fauna. In addition to the positive and negative economic roles our introduced biota plays, it also needs to be evaluated for its ecological roles, and this is generally done in relation to a prognosis of its affect on the native biota.

The relative paucity of our terrestrial vertebrates and their unique vulnerability to the human-associated mammalian predators has forced New Zealand to confront much earlier than most countries the fact that the majority of biodiversity is represented as invertebrates, and particularly as insects. While microorganisms are extremely rich at any particular site, many have high dispersal capabilities or have been spread with soils during early agricultural extension and therefore do not show the same degree of geographic specificity that is found in the insects24.

The taxonomic and the functional uniqueness of the New Zealand biota means that we cannot unquestioningly import approaches to biodiversity evaluation from outside the country. We must develop methods that are appropriate for New Zealand. For example, ants are used extensively for biodiversity evaluation in Australia, but this group is anomalous in New Zealand providing only about 10 endemics from a total of c.34 species25.

3.2 - A profound ecological disturbance: the arrival of humans

New Zealand was the last landmass of any size to be settled by humans. About 80 percent of the land area was originally forest or regenerating forest, but in less than a thousand years approximately 67 percent of our land area has been radically transformed by humans26.

The greatest difference between the impacts of Maori and European settlement is not in the clearance of forested land by fire, but in the subsequent highly efficient total replacement of indigenous systems with pastoral systems by Europeans. While Maori also introduced exotic biota, some of which (e.g. kiore) are likely to have had a highly deleterious effect on the local biota, they did not have the resources to totally substitute exotic for indigenous systems in the manner that Europeans did. The existing dichotomy between culture and nature in New Zealand27 is explained in part by history. New Zealand's rural economy is dependent upon introduced biodiversity. As a relatively young colony the emphasis was on replacing an alien ecosystem with one that was more familiar to them. Attitudes toward the land then were much more utilitarian than would be accepted today.

Despite the historical isolation of New Zealand, our indigenous biota is the result of a continual inflow (and loss) of species over geological time. This has been driven by the extreme changes in latitude, topography, coastline and volcanic influence associated with a position on the edge of an active tectonic zone. They are now driven at a much-accelerated rate by human movement and trade. Resulting system relationships pose some intriguing ecological questions of pertinence to the CBD. For example Eucalyptus species were once part of the New Zealand biota and this may have consequences in terms of the ability of current eucalypt plantations to support indigenous biota. This aspect of our imported systems has not yet been evaluated in any widespread comparative manner.

About fifty percent of New Zealand has had the original biotic systems replaced by an imported pastoral system. Much of the initial land clearance was conducted by the early Lands and Survey government department, which had a policy of near total clearance of indigenous systems from the landscape. As a result, complete conversion of landscapes to a pastoral 'monoculture' came to be widely accepted as an appropriate way to manage the land. In most areas of the country this is the predominant and sometimes the only system now visible. The 'improved grassland' system has apparently been associated with an almost complete replacement of the indigenous biota, not just of the highly visible vascular plant species, but also of the majority of the more cryptic components such as the invertebrates28.

This 'learned aesthetic' of a totally pastoral landscape relates to our very recent pioneer history rather than being imported from Britain. At the time of most colonisation hedgerows and patches of trees were a major part of the British countryside, yet they were not retained here. Unfortunately many New Zealanders adopted an obsessive "lawn-mowing" or "tidying-up" philosophy that resulted in ecological monocultures in farmland, annihilation of roadside biotic networks, draining of wetlands and clearing of ditches etc - all potential sources of habitat heterogeneity that could have helped sustain our native biodiversity throughout inhabited areas. Fear of weed incursion has spurred many New Zealanders to discharge millions of litres of chemicals along roadsides and fence-lines in the belief that dead vegetation is safer and tidier.

3.3 - Changed ecological emphases in New Zealand

Species endangerment: a more pressing problem in New Zealand than elsewhere

The combined assaults of massive and rapid habitat change and introduction of ecological competitors and predators were imposed on a biota unprepared by co-evolution to cope. The high rate of endemism meant that the elimination of the species from New Zealand was in most cases equivalent to globalised extinction. Equivalent localised extinctions associated with human expansion on continents do not as often appear on the slate as irreversible ecological changes because the species often occur elsewhere and can now be introduced from there to their former range. It is therefore not surprising that the rate of New Zealand species extinction has been extreme by any international yardstick. If we measure impact as the number of species already lost and the current numbers of threatened species per unit area of land, New Zealand has all the more extreme a case of the global environmental crisis. Similarly dividing the number of species currently threatened (a measure of the size of the coming challenge) by the national tax take (a measure of our economic capacity to respond to the environmental crisis) we are severely hamstrung. For example, USA has 76 times more tax revenue per endangered species than does New Zealand29.

Our comparatively high rate of species endangerment undoubtedly changes the relative emphasis for conservation management in New Zealand. Extinction is forever - an irreversible degradation of biodiversity. New Zealand must therefore foster and retain the excellent single-species conservation intervention programmes for which it is internationally renowned. The essential debate developed in more detail in the remainder of this review is whether an Ecosystem Management approach, with its attendant multi-species and generic ecological process emphasis, will force reduction in single species emphasis needed to safeguard threatened taxa. We argue that Ecosystems Management must not entirely replace single species emphasis for threatened taxa but is an essential complementary strategy that will in the longer run prevent more and more New Zealand species slip into the endangered category.

The predator threat demands active conservation management in New Zealand

Apart from two species of bat, New Zealand had no endemic terrestrial mammals or snakes. Humans have introduced a wide range of mammalian predator/scavengers against which the native biota had no defence. The subsequent widespread removal of predator-free space has resulted in 32 percent of the endemic land and freshwater birds becoming extinct. Predation is still the most urgent problem confronting wildlife conservation in New Zealand. The Department of Conservation considers predation to be a critical threat to 18 of 30 vertebrate species, such as our national symbol the kiwi, that are of highest priority for conservation30. In the past, conservation managers considered predator control in situ too unreliable, difficult and expensive. So the safest and most effective response was to shift threatened species to offshore islands where the predators did not occur31. Now that most of the critically threatened species are secure on offshore islands there has been a shift of emphasis towards restoration of mainland ecological communities. This CBD initiative to enhance biodiversity in highly managed agricultural and forestry habitats continues this trend.

Ongoing decline of several species suggests that predation will continue to restructure New Zealand's mainland forest communities unless the effective predator control occurs. It is only recently that relatively safe and effective methods of predator control have become available for conservation managers that might allow sustained pest control for restoration of mainland ecological communities. Rats and stoats are the critical predator species in South Island beech forests, especially after beech seeding has triggered population irruptions32. A recent (1995) repeat of bird counts done in the 1970s in beech forests at Nelson Lakes National Park detected declines in the abundance of 10 species (and increase in one) over the intervening 15 years33. Since there has been no broad scale active conservation management intervention in those Nelson Lakes National Park forests, there is no reason to hope that the declines are not ongoing. This emphasises the risk of doing nothing or simply assuming that retention of undisturbed habitat is all that is needed to safeguard biodiversity. The preservation approach cannot secure biodiversity on it's own. Commitment from conservation managers to becoming perpetual "natural gardeners" that constantly weed out introduced predators and browsers so that other species, often indigenous ones, can survive is a co-requisite with habitat retention for conservation success. Indeed, while most of New Zealand's indigenous biota are being held well below ecological carrying capacity by introduced predators, habitat quality is a less immediate management priority34, at least in forests.

Active predator control in agricultural landscapes is probably also a critical step for full restoration of their biodiversity, but this inference is based on extrapolation from intensive research and conservation management in indigenous forests. Study of the response of agricultural biodiversity to predator controls is a worthy research priority.

The need for active ongoing intervention to secure biodiversity makes the CBD's emphasis on ecosystem management all the more pertinent and valuable in New Zealand. Active protection of vast areas of preserved habitat is simply not economically feasible. The Ecosystem Management emphasis on involving people and integrating sustainable use of resources to empower conservation stewardship (like active predator control) will become critical if biodiversity is to be protected over most of New Zealand. Ecosystem Management's emphasis on all of society being involved and taking personal responsibility for conservation action is the gateway to restoration in situ with humans living in highly modified and actively managed agricultural landscapes.

Biosecurity is particularly important in New Zealand

The overarching importance of active management to control exotic predators and competitors underscores the critical importance of our biosecurity measures to ensure that yet more destructive new organisms do not establish in New Zealand. Unfortunately agricultural activities indirectly contribute to escalating risks of unwanted introductions and therefore New Zealand's agricultural biodiversity commitments must consider biosecurity as paramount.

The virtually complete ecosystem conversion associated with pastoral and arable agriculture contributes to the ongoing establishment of exotic organisms in New Zealand. Species can only persist where their ecological needs are met and it is noticeable that there are relatively few exotic establishments in relatively intact late-successional native forest35. This lends support to the conceptual model of systems being highly integrated, and species invasion and persistence being very dependent on the presence of an appropriate receiving community (i.e. suitable habitat and predator-free and competitor-free space). Explanation of the widespread intrusion of the exotic vertebrates and wasps into the native forest systems lies in their extremely generalist nature and the presence of a high standing crop of honeydew36. Ecological disturbance of a receiving community predisposes it to invasion by new organisms37.

The great majority of potentially damaging organisms are insects and the border security and potential response protocols on discovery of a new organism is already well organised. Increasing travel by humans and traffic of their goods is escalating the frequency of challenge to our border surveillance, but there are also other contributors to increased risk.

The increasing intensity and frequency of extreme climatic events resulting from global warming increases both the influx of exotic organisms and their opportunities for establishment38. Extensive transformation of the New Zealand habitat contributes to the establishment of exotic species in this country, as seen with insects associated with Australian eucalypts. New Zealand is both nearby and downwind of Australia and the expansion of Eucalyptus spp. plantations here has increased the probability of wind-borne immigrants landing in a suitable "receiving community".

Biocontrol opportunity is higher in New Zealand

Transformation to pasture of half of the New Zealand landscape has been beneficial for the few indigenous organisms whose ecological needs are met by improved grassland (e.g. grass grub beetle and porina moths). These species were transformed from minor components of the New Zealand biota into major pests causing millions of dollars of lost production. Initially a huge investment was made searching overseas for biocontrol agents for these species. However, one of the greatest potential sustainable biocontrols (Serratia bacteria) was discovered from a closer investigation of the native biota already associated with them39.

Biocontrol more normally involves targeting an introduced pest using introduced biocontrol agents. It becomes a particularly important strategy in New Zealand because most introductions of pest species stem from one or a few founder individuals. The founding "beach-head" population40 is unlikely to be carrying it's full complement of natural enemies (parasites and pathogens) and specialised predators from the donor community are unlikely to be already present in New Zealand. Biocontrol by introduction of host-specific natural enemies collected from the donor communities is therefore an alluring prospect for biodiversity protection providing risks of unwanted effects can be minimised. Unfortunately biocontrol of vertebrates is very problematic, partly because host-specific enemies of vertebrates are difficult to find and past attempts have had many unwanted effects41, and partly because societal concerns of the ethics of releasing natural enemies against furry and warm-blooded animals like mammals. Nevertheless biocontrol of the introduced mammals using new genetic engineering techniques may represent the only prospect for broad scale and cheap control of New Zealand's main pests of biodiversity42.

Biocontrol efforts may not have been quite so necessary or more effective had pasture establishment been conducted with a philosophy of retention of native vegetation within the New Zealand landscape. For example three native parasitoids (parasites that kill their host), accounted for 39 percent parasitism of porina moths43. Higher rates of parasitism by the most common parasitoid occur near trees44. The preference of the parasitoids for such areas limited their impact on this pest in extensive improved pasture45. The tachinid fly Procissio cana offers a similar example. It achieves 20 percent parasitism of grass grub in unimproved high country grassland but is absent from extensive lowland improved pasture46. Both pasture damage and evaluations of parasitoid potential may have been very different in a more integrated landscape blending pasture and indigenous vegetation in more equal amounts47. This illustrates a general maxim that asserts that long-term economic benefit of habitat diversification will result from safeguarding agricultural biodiversity: Conservation can sometimes save rather than cost money if a longer-term perspective is accounted for.

Control of mammalian browsers is particularly important in New Zealand

Just as New Zealand animals were unprepared by co-evolution for the onslaught of introduced predators, so too our endemic plants were vulnerable to introduced mammalian browsers48. Few New Zealand plants have thorns or toxins to protect them from browsing mammals and their reproductive rates and ability to recruit young plants into the populations has often been curtailed by the domestic animals used in agriculture. Browsing is the single biggest threat to most of our threatened plants. For example, wide ranging surveys on cabbage tree and pohutukawa decline problems revealed that only 15 percent and five percent respectively of sites show regeneration49. Regeneration only occurred on sites inaccessible to domestic stock. This and several other examples show that removal of stock is very important to retain New Zealand lowland forest and shrubland biota.

Habitat changes that affect browsing pressure may therefore have strong indirect and largely unexpected effects on biodiversity in New Zealand. For example, removal of grazing pressure on native forest regeneration by widespread forestry plantings has probably had an strong (albeit often unconscious) positive effect on New Zealand biodiversity conservation over large areas of our landscape. The largest areas of tree planting are now occurring on private farms where subsequent landscape variation is much greater than that found in the pine plantations of the large companies. Farm forestry is thus probably an optimum way to rapidly improve conservation of indigenous biota over large areas. It provides an excellent example of how an economic driver may influence conservation aims in a positive way and on a scale not possible to achieve purely for conservation aims. It also shows how economic productivity and biodiversity retention are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The fact that the biodiversity gains being made were not done primarily for conservation goals should not inhibit New Zealand claiming the positive benefits to the CBD.

Seral vegetation is particularly important in the New Zealand landscape

New Zealand systems may have special characteristics resulting from the tectonic origins and oceanic island nature of the country. Although predominantly a forest biome, much of the landscape has been constantly undergoing patchwork succession after volcanic, earthquake or wind disturbance events. This has resulted in an elevated importance of successional shrubland stages to the biodiversity of New Zealand. Although many perceive tall, undisturbed forest as being the repository of the majority of biodiversity, biomass is not biodiversity. Large tree structure is mostly cellulose of very high Carbon to Nitrogen (C:N) ratio and is mostly dead tissue in the form of heartwood. As the wood decays the carbon is released into the atmosphere and the C:N ratio is reduced approximately tenfold in the transformation to fungal mycelium, and then again into insect bodies. Relative biodiversity is best evaluated using invertebrates and both general observational and quantified comparative studies suggest that in New Zealand, late-successional diverse shrubland communities are richer in insect activity than are tall, undisturbed forest50.

It is likely that this feature is not unique to New Zealand because most biodiversity is known to be engaged in recycling processes. Production only concerns the current year's accumulation of energy, while recycling concerns bioaccumulation from all previous years. The biodiversity of systems can thus be seen to enable system adaptability through providing a wide range of transformation pathways of the accumulated energy. The actual rather than perceived biodiversity of ecosystems therefore reveals that vegetation disturbance per se as sustaining rather than anathema to forest biodiversity51. This illustrates a more general imperative: it is crucial to guide policy and management of both conservation and production from reliable knowledge of biodiversity, rather than just perceptions of it. A more immediate corollary is that the highly disturbed nature of agricultural landscapes and ensuing preponderance of scrub may be an important cradle for endemic biodiversity that has evolved to persist in seral vegetation formed by natural disturbance. Some of the actions of agriculturalists, by triggering disturbance may indeed benefit biodiversity, and the potential value of seral shrubland in New Zealand landscapes deserves high priority for research.

New Zealand plants are particularly vulnerable to disturbance by fire

Unlike vegetation in semi-arid regions like Australia, New Zealand's vegetation has not been subjected to frequent or intense burning. Most of New Zealand's endemic plants are therefore not adapted to cope with the increased fire frequency that came with human occupation52. Maori fires had a huge effect on New Zealand's landscapes and the ongoing deliberate use of fire, or unintended fires associated with agriculture have potentially devastating impacts on native vegetation communities. Evaluation of fire risk and effects will therefore be an unusually important consideration for New Zealand's agricultural biodiversity.

Habitat restoration is particularly important in New Zealand's agricultural landscapes

The immediate importance of predator control is not a warrant to neglect or degrade habitats. High quality, diverse and non-fragmented habitats must be there for when predator control has rebuilt numbers to carrying capacity. We see restoration or recreation of habitat to be an urgent priority for biodiversity, and especially so in agricultural landscapes. Amongst all the predominant land uses in New Zealand, agricultural landscape is probably the one that most needs attention to the habitat issues because it is where habitats have been most degraded and homogenised. Elsewhere the platform for retention of biodiversity, the habitat itself, is relatively secure and active predator management is the remaining first priority. An increase in the amount of woody indigenous vegetation, especially indigenous tree species, is the most widespread and urgent priority for New Zealand's agricultural landscapes.

3.4 - New Zealand's need for integration of conservation and production concerns

The allocation model is failing biodiversity

The concern for our native biota, and in particular the vascular plants and birds, has dominated New Zealand's historical conservation practise and policy. This has resulted in a separation of conservation and production in terms of issues, research, management and geographic areas. A land 'allocation model' of conservation (actually preservation) in one place and use in another place has been envisaged rather than an 'integration model' where use and conservation happen on the same land.

The allocation approach was a necessary phase in the development of conservation of New Zealand biodiversity. The exploitation of New Zealand's environment was central to a natural reaction against the previous excess. The first reaction manifested itself as a strong emphasis on preservation of indigenous systems. There was also a need to act quickly using a top-down preservation approach to halt widespread, state-funded despoliation of habitats. This is largely the position New Zealand is in today, with land segregated into "productive" and "conservation" estates. Much of the rhetoric relates to a belief that, on any piece of land, humans face a choice between two mutually exclusive goals - either use, or protection. The assumptions underpinning this dichotomy include the idea that - at least in New Zealand - use is necessarily harmful, and that the removal of use from indigenous lands ensures - or at least strongly advances - its ecological protection.

Those that agree with the allocation model believe that it works, or has the potential to work. However, there is a growing membership within the science, policy and environmental movements who question whether it is working, or can work, and whether the assumptions underlying it have any validity in fact. They advocate an approach, or at least an acknowledgement of a pluralism of approaches, to environmental management that is more integrative of society, and less dependent on human-excluded reserves as the dominant (and sometimes the only) tool available to protect and restore biodiversity53.

Although approximately 30% of New Zealand land area is allocated to preservation area, this is primarily focussed in the high country and alpine zone, whereas localised endemicity of the New Zealand biota is widespread54. We therefore require conservation measures across the national landscape. Reservation alone puts biodiversity at risk simply by restricting the area and embedded micro-habitat variation designated solely to conservation through preservation. Seventy percent of the opportunity for conservation therefore rests outside the conservation estate. Active management to enhance biodiversity in the majority of New Zealand is at stake when considering whether or not to mount a strong CBD initiative for agricultural biodiversity. That 70% is potentially particularly important for New Zealand's biodiversity because it is predominantly in the lowland fertile sites where biodiversity is greatest. Promulgation of biodiversity in such areas must greatly reduce risks of extinction of several endemic species, especially those relatively small and cryptic species that are crucial to ecosystem function - the invertebrates.

Pine plantations: an example of unseen opportunity for biodiversity

We expect all parts of managed systems to offer support for biodiversity that could be extended by better knowledge and management. For example pine plantations have been widely seen as negative influences on biodiversity. However, initial comparison of Malaise trapped beetle samples from pine plantations and indigenous systems55 shows that although community variation within extensive pine plantations is more limited than indigenous systems at the landscape scale, at a local scale indigenous species are very rich and abundant. Similarly, many native insectivorous birds are more abundant in pine forests than in native forests56.

Such forests in a diverse landscape (such as farm forests) would thus act as a positive influence on biodiversity. The life histories of the beetle species present show us that the comparatively high species richness and abundance is related to the relatively enormously accelerated carbon accumulation and recycling occurring in these managed pine systems.

The importance of resource quality to biodiversity is a major aspect of current scientific debate57 although it has previously received considerable attention from applied entomology as a basis for understanding the dynamics of herbivory. The indigenous biodiversity which accumulates over the tree-growing rotation is not lost when a forest is harvested. This is not only because adjacent tree compartments of different ages are usually available. It is also because enormous woody debris resources are made available at harvest and these nurture a succession of native biota for several years58.

Scientific understanding of the configurations of the finer scales of biodiversity is still in its infancy in New Zealand, partly because of the neglect of biodiversity research in agricultural landscapes. This neglect is an unfortunate outcome of the allocation model that created a belief that conservation is something that only occurs in reserves where indigenous species predominate. Improving our knowledge offers tremendous potential to both help guide the correction of inappropriate land management and also to alter negative perceptions of appropriate production land management. Section 6 of this report analyses ways that greater gains for biodiversity could accrue from this pine forestry example, but we expect the same opportunity exists in all of New Zealand's agricultural landscapes and land uses within them.

Building public support and ecological responsibility

Fostering conservation in managed landscapes where people live and interact with wildlife day by day offers opportunity to changing attitudes in support of conservation59. Hands-on involvement in decision making to foster biodiversity will accelerate building of a land ethic. This is a fundamental step for people to take personal responsibility for New Zealand's conservation rather than simply paying conservation taxes and leaving a government department like DoC to manage distant reserves.

New Zealand's Economic Reliance on Agriculture

New Zealand has an enormous economic dependence on imported biological systems. Exports of food and fibre from New Zealand landscapes are sold in far off markets. This globalisation potentially leaves New Zealand landscapes to carry ecological costs if production has not been ecologically sustainable, while crowded overseas communities are sustained by our protein, energy and fibre. Economic reward can sometimes threaten conservation and this has lead to a general conviction amongst many preservationists that all commercial use is a threat. Where a resource is held in common, economic exploitation can be extreme and equivalent to mining because there is little incentive to save resources that could then be taken over by someone else60. This threat does not apply to New Zealand's agricultural landscapes, which are firmly regulated by New Zealand law and where private ownership ensures that rewards from investment in the future sustainability of the landscape will be reaped by the family accepting reduced short-term profit by not degrading the land. There is a growing realisation that economic investment in natural resource extraction can even become an incentive to look after that resource all the more. A long-term view to sustain a permanent reward by living off interest alone depends on not degrading the capital asset - in this case the ecological and economic wealth of the land. A recent review by Hartley (1997) has emphasised many of the ways that economic investment can represent opportunity rather than a threat for New Zealand conservation. Acceptance of this wider principle will lead to better application of the ecosystem management approach to safeguarding New Zealand's agricultural biodiversity.

Currently commodity markets are increasingly demanding that land-based production systems be evaluated for their role in sustaining biodiversity. This is providing opportunity and incentive to increase biodiversity conservation, but also to refocus management of land-based production onto optimisation of sustainability (often with increased profitability) rather than simply onto maximising output. As a consequence of these changing perspectives and opportunities, there is an urgent requirement to be able to better evaluate and document the relative characteristics and attributes of biodiversity within the New Zealand land management systems.

3.5 - New Zealand's urgent need for research to allow ecosystem management and meet CBD commitments

Our unique biotic heritage, and comparative devaluing of modified environments leaves an enormous knowledge gap about how best to manage biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. We must do most of the research for ourselves because most of the potential crucial plants and animals in the system are endemic. The most obvious change in CBD emphasis for New Zealand is the early acknowledgement of a need to document the attributes of the cryptic biota of the vegetation systems recognised by land managers. Some of the tools have already been developed but funding or political will to mount long-term monitoring and research have not yet been sufficient to apply them. For example, a scientifically justifiable and pragmatic method of providing comparable information on the attributes of insect communities of agroecosystems has already been developed and tested for New Zealand biota61. The approach uses the most species-rich group, sampled over the period of greatest community homogeneity and is beginning to be used by researchers in several institutions. However, this is not yet happening in a co-ordinated manner.

A more extensive and co-ordinated programme using the Ecosystem Management approach as a core, has potential to:

  • provide a ranking of crop types and management regimes for their affect on biodiversity conservation
  • provide data on other cryptic biota of systems and their relationship to management
  • have high relevance to a New Zealand biosecurity monitoring network
  • provide a pest monitoring network in a range of production landscapes
  • provide a training ground (from schools upward) for the skills New Zealand will increasingly need in biodiversity and biosecurity science and operations
  • provide a mechanism for reconstituting a collaborative ecological science base in New Zealand, as all institutions could be involved
  • test a wide range of ecological hypotheses
  • provide guidance to landscape management for ecological, economic and social sustainability.

Improving knowledge of the less apparent (but major) part of the biodiversity of systems is a particularly necessary step in broadening perceptions formed from an incomplete appreciation of system biodiversity. Such a programme has great potential to de-polarise the current conservation/production debate and to provide guidance for efforts to sustain biodiversity across the New Zealand landscape. It would also provide necessary documentation to international bodies for both market certification and meeting of policy commitments.

3.6 - The emergence of an ecosystem approach in New Zealand

Both conservation and production aims now have much to gain by a greater reintegration of these formally polarised perspectives. Recognition that conservation and use are not necessarily mutually exclusive is already formalised at the highest of policy levels in New Zealand through the Resource Management Act 1991 and the Forests Act Amendment 1993. New Zealand's commitment to the CBD's ecosystem management approach represents an opportunity to accelerate this integrative approach.

The continuing emergence of landscape ecology and ecosystem management, underpinned by the developments in ecological theory, is partly responsible for swelling the numbers of these advocates for change. They represent a New Zealand contingent of a far larger international trend in environment management who strongly endorse landscape ecology and ecosystem management.

The increased advocacy of a more human-inclusive environmental management in New Zealand stems partly from a growing concern that the dichotomy between preserves and production; culture and nature; "exotic" and indigenous; is failing to achieve environmental goals. But that advocacy for change is also motivated by a sociological concern. If we accept that humans are going to live in New Zealand for the long term, then at some stage we have to ask when we ourselves are permitted to call ourselves "native" to this country, and what that status means in terms of our own identity - as either New Zealanders - or as colonists whose "home" is somewhere else. The dichotomies of culture vs. nature, indigenous vs. "exotic", use vs. reserves in many ways represent this crisis of identity which many New Zealanders face.

Identifying oneself as a "native" of the country is a perspective that has much in common with the environmental philosophies of the Maori62 and other peoples who have no such crisis of identity63. From an international perspective, Barnhill sums up the issue in the preface to his cultural anthology:

"...the principle focus is on the possibilities of being at home on the earth: finding place, reinhabitation, and becoming native. The essays articulate how we fit in nature and how we can work with it. If we are to create a culture that lives in harmony with the earth, if we are to overcome our alienation from nature, we all need to find our path toward becoming true inhabitants of place" (Barnhill 1999).

3.7 - Conclusion: is New Zealand a special case?

New Zealand's slowness to adopt an Ecosystem Management approach raises a crucial question: is New Zealand a special case, as is often claimed, where the Ecosystem Management approach is less relevant than elsewhere to safeguard our biodiversity? It appears that the ecological and social reasons for questioning the dichotomy between preservation and conservation that exists in New Zealand are the same as those internationally. We acknowledge above that there are subtle changes in relative emphasis in the way the conservation paradigm might best be applied in New Zealand. In particular we agree that the large number of threatened species demands strong single-species research and very targeted single-species management efforts, but not to the exclusion of the ecosystem approach. If New Zealand fails to get the ecosystem management approach underway it will be forever caught on a treadmill of trying to keep individual components of the ecological system alive while the wider ecological system degrades further into dysfunction.

The old ways are not working, and they are often based on environmental, economic and social ideology rather than any empirical base. The underlying views that contribute to the defence of the dichotomy are:

  • Environmental - the idea of ecological stasis and determinism
  • Economic - the idea that reductionist single objectives lead to better outcomes, and
  • Sociological - the idea that people and their actions are "exotic" rather than indigenous to New Zealand, and "harm" the "static and deterministic" nature.
  • Many people do not accept that there is any empirical evidence for these three ideas. Further, a central tenet of landscape ecology and the ecosystem approach is that the ecological, social and economic functions and processes work across the landscape, and across administrative boundaries. In New Zealand the same patterns must apply - they are rules applying to all ecological, economic and social systems from which New Zealand cannot be excluded.

Given this, the segregation of biodiversity concerns is nothing if not problematic. The approach we have currently adopted (a "dis"-integrated approach to landscape processes) may in reality be putting at risk our endemic and vulnerable species. This disturbing possibility is summed up well for New Zealand by Norton (1998):

Although we have made great progress with indigenous biodiversity conservation in New Zealand in recent years we are still stumbling when it comes to dealing with realities of modern New Zealand and especially the ways we will need to deal with conservation in the 21st century. In particular many people, including some professional ecologists, are still failing to realise that conservation and production no longer need to be mutually exclusive land use options. As Harry Recher elegantly put it in the June 1997 editorial in Pacific Conservation Biology "For too long Western nations have pursued the myth of the nature conservation through reserves". This is very true in New Zealand where the "myth of reserves" still appears to be a dominant paradigm in our conservation thinking.

I am not arguing that we should abandon protected lands and protected species. Rather, for the two thirds of New Zealand that is not protected land and that has suffered most since the arrival of humans in New Zealand, we need to look for different approaches to nature conservation. To truly address nature conservation in New Zealand our goals and visions for the future must focus on all of New Zealand, not just the formally protected areas and species. To develop realistic goals and visions for doing this we need to address three key issues:

  1. The distinction we continue to draw between conservation land and other land
  2. The indigenous-exotic distinction
  3. The constant referral back to the past.

Unless we can deal with these issues, and change the current paradigm, I do not believe we will achieve the successes in nature conservation we would like to. (Norton 1998)

For the better achievement of both ecological and social outcomes, an integrated approach as advocated by the CBD is desirable64. We therefore conclude that the application of Ecosystem Management is essential and especially overdue in New Zealand.

A strong lead agency is needed to help facilitate change to broaden our environmental philosophy and management approach. New Zealand's Ministry for the Environment is doing tremendous work to break down allocation model barriers but in the final analysis is not a lead agency for natural resource use in the way that MAF is. We therefore recommend that MAF takes a strong national advocacy and facilitating role for Ecosystem Management approaches to conservation of biodiversity in agricultural and forestry landscapes65. Their mandate to do so is underscored by New Zealand's commitment to the CBD and the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy. The generation of this review is hopefully just the first step in a much longer journey that MAF could guide New Zealand along. This would not only safeguard agricultural biodiversity. It would also broaden and mature the somewhat narrow and increasingly dysfunctional national perception that conservation is mainly about scenic landscapes and government officials saving threatened species by removing people from ecological interaction with their land.

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