What price our heritage?

Forest and Bird, Volume 17, Issue 1, 1 February 1986, Page 6

What price our heritage?

At its present level of funding, the Protected Natural Area surveys might be finished in 70 years. Gerard Hutching reports on what the programme is and why it is stalled by lack of funds.

ew Zealand's ‘‘forgotten habitats — long regarded as the poor relations in the conservation family — are today standing in line for better treatment. Native forests have always loomed large in our consciousness, but it is only recently that an awareness of the worth of wetlands, tussocklands, shrublands and dunelands has grown. Suddenly, it seems, people are discovering fascinating pockets of original New Zealand that make their districts distinctive — whether it be a mangrove swamp, sand dunes covered with native plants, tussock grasslands or isolated fragments of bush hitherto ignored. For example, a 1980 DSIR survey found that only nine hectares of the former one million hectares of short tussock grassland in Otago was protected in scenic reserves. Even where short tussock has been reserved, such as the Bankside Scientific Reserve beside the Rakaia River on the Canterbury Plains, the tiny area set aside — two hectares — has proved too small and is suffering from fertiliser and spray drift. Chances lost To the moa hunters and early European settlers of the South Island, short tussocks were all-pervasive, just as dripping rainforest and flax swamp dominated the Waikato basin or the kauri, kahikatea and mangrove represented the lowlands of Northland. Yet in all these areas this distinctive and widespread natural vegetation and its animal inhabitants have been almost completely replaced by introductions and a cultural landscape. Opportunities are rapidly dwindling for us and our descendants to have any perception of the landscape around our homes that greeted our earliest ancestors. Equally, or possibly even more importantly, the chance is being lost to secure baselines in such natural landscapes against which to measure the effects of cultural change on the soil and its biota. Subtle genetic diversity and adaptations in native plants and animals throughout the country are also being lost. At an Official level, an attempt is being made to identify what is left of our natural areas and to protect representative examples of natural vegetation and wildlife. The emphasis is now very much on protecting representative examples rather than just focussing on the rare or exceptional. Thus, Northland’s infertile gumlands, West Coast pakihis, the arid native shrublands of inland Marlborough and the red tussock of the Southland plains will have a chance of joining the native forest areas that dominate the present reserve network.

When it was launched in 1983, the Protected Natural Areas Programme was hailed as the means by which New Zealand could plan ‘‘an integrated land use programme with the minimum of conflict over different options." Two years later, though, the programme is starved for funds and could be stalled unless urgent action is taken. Destruction continues Meanwhile the destruction has continued. Native forest still goes into the sawmill and chipper or up in smoke, making way for pines and grass; between 1978 and

1982, 367,000 hectares of ‘‘scrub and brushweed"’ was destroyed; the original character of dunelands is changing through widespread marram grass planting; exotic green pasture has replaced large areas of tussockland with the aid of taxpayers’ subsidies, and wetlands are still going down the drain because of subsidies. The PNA programme was set up by the National Parks and Reserves Authority to provide the framework for protecting the best of what remains of all ecosystems throughout the country. The Authority realised that most of New Zealand's national and forest parks and large reserves are found in mountainous areas; they do not fairly represent the original diversity of the country. This is clearly recognised in legislation — the Reserves Act 1977 states the objective of ‘‘preservation of representative samples of all classes of natural ecosystems and landscapes which in the aggregate originally gave New Zealand its own recognisable character.’’ The Government in its 1984 election manifesto reinforced that message. When it came to power it found a programme up and running. All it had to do was fund it, but in fact it has cut its funding. The amount required to cover the whole country is estimated to be $7 million over the next 10 years. Chequered career From the start, the PNA programme has had a somewhat chequered administrative career; the NPRA has overall responsibility for the scheme through a complex management committee on which several Government departments and the QE II National Trust was represented. Programme staff have been employed by Lands and Survey but paid through the Labour Department’s Special Employment Scheme. The SES was always envisaged as a temporary scheme, but in the two years of the programme'’s existence, no longterm funding proposal has been put forward to the Government. The PNA programme has two phases — survey and implementation — and as a first step New Zealand was divided up into 268 ecological districts based on climate, landform, soils, vegetation and wildlife. The Biological Resources Centre under Dr Geoff Park carried out this sub-division and devised methods of rapid survey. The key survey phase got underway in late 1983. It was estimated the programme would last 10 years. Working in teams of seven to 10, teams conducted four pilot studies, surveying both public and private land with permission from the owners or lessees:

Rodney district. Just north of Auckland, this district contains remnant forests much affected by logging and fire, but which are strongly regenerating. Rocky headlands, forest fragments and complex estuarine systems enclosed by sandspits and dunes are a feature of the district. Motu district. Eastern Bay of Plenty. Much of the land here is Maori land in multiple ownership, lying between Raukumara State Forest Park and the sea. Long hours were spent in meetings with owners, and it was stressed that protection of key areas would be voluntary. Mackenzie region and the Old Man district. While the magnificent South Island natural tussocklands stand comparison with other great world grasslands such as the North American prairies, scarcely any have been reserved. Forest and Bird has been pushing strongly for the protection of important natural areas in the high country, but it is vital to know where those areas are. In the main runholders are pleased that such surveys are being conducted, since questions about what needs to be protected will become clear cut, leaving no-one in any doubt. New programme problems The teams adopted different approaches in their surveys — the Mackenzie team stretched itself to complete seven districts, while the Old Man team worked more intensively, to find the autumn snows upon them by the time only half the district had been surveyed. That first 1983-84 season highlighted the problems of putting a new programme into practice. On the one hand the teams had to carry out a survey with scientific precision, on the other they had to do it rapidly so the whole country could be covered in a realistic time. The next season the teams built on their previous experience. The Mackenzie team moved north to look at three districts of the Heron region, and the team working on the Old Man district finished their survey and helped a new team in the adjoining Lindis, Dunstan and Pisa districts of the Central Otago region. Other surveys were carried Out in Marlborough (eight small districts), and in the North Island, teams investigated the Pukeamaru district (East Cape) and the Egmont region. At the end of the 1984-85 season, the PNA programme found itself a victim of Labour's wish to cut ‘‘artificial’’ employment schemes. Despite strong Government policy on the need for reserves and a sophisticated programme developed to implement it, funding has virtually dried up. This 1985-86 season, only two surveys are underway. The North Taranaki survey is being jointly funded by Lands and Survey, State Coal Mines, Electricity Division and the Forest Service. The Umbrella district in Central Otago is being surveyed through the University Grants Committee. Staff victims The young graduates who have staffed the PNA programme are also victims of the poor funding. Because it has operated under the temporary SES scheme, staff could

not commit themselves to it (most are striving to find other long term work but would gladly accept PNA work if it were long term). Cathie Brumley, the Old Man team leader, says that a lot of enthusiasm and dedication has gone into the programme over the last two years, but this is in danger of disappearing. ‘With the programme stopping now there is a vast store of experience and expertise which will drift away into new jobs — and when the programme takes off again that experience will have to be slowly and expensively built up again,’’ she says. Derek Roozen, an earth scientist who worked on the survey, points out the value of the broadly based PNA surveys, integrating the biological aspects of the ecosystems with the landforms. He too feels that the loss of staff experience will see the programme set back markedly. ‘‘With the cessation of officially run PNA surveys, the most valuable resource — the knowledge and experience of the survey workers — is lost. If it is restarted sometime in the future, people will have to be trained and will probably make the same mistakes all over again," he says. Dave McKerchar, Director of National Parks and Reserves, agrees that staff have not been given the best treatment, and the programme has suffered as a result. A lack of job security has meant high staff turnover and last minute extensions of the programme have not helped morale. A better deal? However, under the new Conservation Department, the programme may be given a better deal. McKerchar says he hopes to see it as the central mission of the new department in the long term, and thinks it might be more successful in attracting funds after April 1. Critics of Lands and Survey's uneconomic farm developments have pointed out that $70 million was budgeted for this in 1984. $10 million has been budgeted over the next 10 years for the controversial Aotuhia development in eastern Taranaki; (see article in August 1985 Forest and Bird). The National Parks and Reserves budget, on the other hand, amounted to only $11 million in 1984 -85 and has been cut back to $9.8 million this year. Until recently, land development spending by Lands and Survey has not been adequately placed under the microscope, but the folly of spending $10 million for 12 hill country sheep farms in remote Aotuhia will be made plain with the establishment of the Land Development Management Corporation.

Decisions , will , then a be made by Cabinet rather than bureaucrats; this transparency is central to the rationale for the Department of Conservation. The new department will have a clear and undivided responsibility for conservation. It is vital that it presses strongly for PNA funding, and that the merits of its case are given a sympathetic hearing by the purse string controllers in Treasury. Implementation the key Once the PNA surveys are completed, areas will then have to be protected, again raising the question of finance. However, many areas will be protected at minimal cost. They may be publicly-owned lands, their owners may be willing to covenant them either through the QE II National Trust or with the Government under the Reserves Act, or the land may be swapped for less ecologically valuable Crown land. Some key areas will have to be bought outright. However it is done, implementation of the PNA surveys must follow rapidly. When it was begun in 1983, the programme was hailed as a world leader. By 1986 the claim rings a little hollow. It is not so much the programme which is deficient but the political will to push it. ye