6. Monitoring
Monitoring of strategies is both good practice, and is required by the Act in Section 76(1)(l) which states that the strategy shall specify:
"The manner in which the Regional Council concerned intends to monitor the effect of the strategy and the performance of the management agency;"
All Councils have fulfilled this requirement of the Act, although the types of monitoring adopted have varied. A number of different types of monitoring were proposed, which include:
- Pest incidence indicators such as scales or indices (Maclean's scale, trap counts), density classification indices, presence or absence, aerial transect photography;
- Property monitoring, including total monitoring, sample monitoring (by percentage or by property class based on previous control history);
- Database maintenance, including poison use, and register of properties;
- Complaints and reporting register; and
- General surveillance.
All Councils involved in service delivery had monitoring processes in place for poison operations. Monitoring and auditing of other Council functions in respect of the strategy was generally undertaken in an informal manner as part of general supervision. No Councils had a formal process in place for monitoring the development of their strategies, although most of the Councils involved used the peer review offered through the BTAG group. In addition to this monitoring, one Council involved in the review was collecting information on the costs associated with Nassella Tussock control, with a view to utilising the information at the time of strategy review.
The management agency performance was generally to be monitored through the operational plan process, including its preparation, review and achievement. One Council allowed for independent review of its performance as the management agency.
Good management practice would generally expect that the monitoring process was related directly to the objective of the strategy, and that it uses a mechanism which is independent of the methods used in the strategy. Thus for example it is less useful to monitor the achievement of an objective which says "reduce the spread of ..." by property inspections, when this is also the tactic adopted by the Council for achieving the objective. Such an approach would provide no independent feedback to the Council as to the overall achievement of the objective28.
It is our observation that in a number of cases the relationship between the objectives in the strategy and the monitoring proposed for the strategy was not well defined. This was less true for animal management strategies, where established performance objectives such as Maclean's or Guilford's Scale29, night counts, faecal pellet counts, and trap catch rates are well studied and established techniques. However, the plant strategies in general did not contain a strong relationship between the objectives in the strategy (such as a reduction in spread) and the monitoring programme. This problem is recognised by most of the Councils involved in this study, and relates primarily to a lack of information regarding documented techniques for monitoring plant populations.
The promotion of good, independent monitoring of strategies is one of the key recommendations of this report. Without appropriate, technical monitoring of the progress toward achieving the strategy objectives, the Councils will encounter real difficulties in satisfying themselves that their strategies are a worthwhile use of resources. In the absence of reliable information on which to make judgements a reliance on historical and political necessity is a reasonable justification for the inclusion of pests in the first round of strategies. However, this reliance should be partnered with a realistic programme of gathering this information.
The recommendations in this section therefore relate to the development of appropriate monitoring techniques to collect information needed for the review of strategies. The most important task initially is to collate techniques for monitoring plant pest populations including current status and changes over time. The lack of appropriate techniques in this area is felt by all Councils, and there is scope for a co-ordinated approach to funding this work and utilising the resources of a number of Crown Research Institutes.
In second order of priority, but nevertheless of considerable importance, is the development of a knowledge base regarding the costs and benefits of the strategies. This is partially a monitoring issue, in that it is appropriate information for the Councils to collect as a normal part of their pest control function. It also contains a research function however, in that some of the information will need to be collected separately through more intensive techniques. An example of these would be determining the effects of regional intervention, which may require small scale trialing of pest responses to no intervention30.
At the third level or priority is the collection of information regarding the effects of the pests and the strategy. The BSA has some specific requirements for consideration of values which are affected by pests, which could be usefully integrated with the State of the Environment reporting required by the RMA.
28 It would for instance by possible
in this example to show a reduction in spread because property inspections were revealing
fewer pests, yet this could also arise because of fewer inspections or inspections of the
wrong properties.
29 Rabbits and Wallabies respectively.
30 Trialing landholder responses to no regional
intervention is problematical, but it is possible to trial plant responses, such as
determining the effect of no boundary clearance for containment pests.
| © MAF 1999 | ||
| MAFnet Help | Important Disclaimer |
Contact for Enquiries
MAF Information Services
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526
Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
Fax: +64 4 894 0721
Contact this person
