New funding won’t just keep the financial wolves from DoC’s door but taonga species from extinction, Minister says. David Williams reports
The Government has stepped in to arrest the Conservation Department’s own cost-of-living crisis, and a Covid-induced revenue fall.
Fresh funding announced in yesterday’s Budget, to be used in the next financial year, includes $5.9 million for “operations cost pressures”, $5.4 million for “wage pressures”, and $4.5 million to boost the high-profile Tiakina Ngā Manu predator control programme, which directs aerial 1080 poison drops.
The extra money will be a huge relief for DoC, which brought in consultants PWC last year to advise on cost-cutting, and director-general Penny Nelson, who started the job last November as funding issues began to bite.
Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan is framing yesterday’s announcements in terms of the next four years of spending – but that may well rely on the Labour Party holding power after next year’s general election.
“This is the largest-ever new money Budget uptake for conservation,” she told Newsroom, aside from Covid-related spending.
Her office’s tally was $400 million of new spending over four years, Budget appropriations only list $330 million, of which $304 million is operational spending.
The difference is an item, “up to $120m” for inflationary and wage pressure, listed by Allan’s office, some of which is a contingency. However, Budget documents only contain $48.3 million for “operations cost pressures” over four years, and $5.4 million next year for “wage pressures”, with no sums listed for contingencies in other years.
Allan says the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, Te Mana o te Taiao, is central to new spending.
A cash injection will be welcome after years of talking and consulting – launching a discussion document in 2019, the strategy itself a year later, and, last month, the implementation plan.
“We’ve got the strategy, we’ve now got the implementation plan, now we have to fund it,” Allan says.
The implementation strategy was used as a template, she says, “to fund the areas that we need to fund to curb the trend on the biodiversity loss”.
However, the strategy has been criticised for having vague goals, and there are calls for quantifiable targets and biodiversity limits.
Thousands of native plant and wildlife species are threatened or at risk of extinction, including 94 percent of reptile species and 74 percent of land bird species. Further declines are expected.
Predators targeted
Biodiversity-focused announcements made yesterday, for the next four years, include:
- $64 million ($3 million in 2022/23) “to protect native bird and invertebrate populations from the urgent threat of possums, stoats and rats”, some of which will be spent on research and innovation
- $30 million ($5.3 million in 2022/23) for “direct management” – including by recreational hunters – of deer and goats, “to reduce damage to vegetation and indigenous flora”
- And $27 million for Tiakina Ngā Manu, including $4.5 million next year.
“All of that funding there is essentially targeted to protecting the 4000 species that are at the brink of extinction, particularly on land,” Allan says. “I consider that to be a major investment.”
The Budget notes state the predator control programme aims to deliver 600,000 hectares of predator control each year “but due to significant cost increases only 450,000 hectares of annual predator control have been achieved”.
“This funding will reinstate the target and increase the ability to respond to significant mast events.”
Allan says biodiversity spending shows the Government is changing and thinking more broadly. “We want to resource these areas and want to work in collaboration and partnership with people in the ground in our communities.”
The twin crises facing the country might be biodiversity and climate change, but the former is getting most new conservation spending.
There’s a tiny amount, $3.4 million, for a multi-agency project to “maximise carbon storage to achieve carbon emission goals”, and $10.1 million to buy 148 electric vehicles, and pay for charging infrastructure and fleet.
A $7 million pot to protect marine species – like Māui dolphin and the Antipodean albatross – from extinction spends no money in the next financial year. Then there’s $14.6 million to improve “localised marine protection”, earmarked for the Hauraki Gulf and the south-east of the South Island ($570,000 to be spent next year).
The new spending isn’t a cure-all, however.
In February, Stuff reported DoC had cuts its summer science programme in the subantarctic islands for the third year in a row, and plans for a $3 million research centre were mothballed.
Asked if those projects would be funded as part of the Budget announcements, Allan says: “That certainly isn’t one of the areas that I’ve focused on for this year’s Budget.”
“You’ll see more people, more hands on the ground, paid to be doing this work.” – Kiritapu Allan
Beyond inflation and wage pressures, plenty of money’s been earmarked for what might be dubbed “keeping the lights on”.
- $48.3 million “to deliver front line conservation activities, maintain recreational assets to standard, fund biodiversity research and provide adequate corporate support”
- $32.4 million more for cost pressures, “driven by an increasing volume of high priority maintenance work, work related to high-risk structures and the renewal of recreation assets”
- $28 million for “safe access and use of recreational assets for visitors, including for water infrastructure upgrades, asbestos removal, dam safety, remediation of contaminated sites, and ensuring huts and structures meet the building code
- $25 million for the maintenance of residential and commercial properties, “to meet statutory compliance requirements and remedy critical health and safety risks”
- $15.5 million contingency for upgrades and renewals of water infrastructure in the Tongariro National Park
- $7.5 million contingency for repairs by ex-tropical Cyclone Dovi in February.
Tourism recovery is part of the Government’s thinking, Allan says. Pre-Covid, 53 percent of international arrivals visited a national park. Many more would have found their way to lower-level conservation areas.
“We know that international visitors are going to be wanting to come here and we need to be able to offer the facilities to enable them to enjoy the outdoors,” Allan says.
Another $13.2 million is earmarked for cultural heritage work, including 11 new locations for the Tohu Whenua programme which promotes significant historical and cultural sites.
The Dolomite Point project, to build a new visitor centre at Punakaiki, on the South Island’s West Coast, owned and operated by Ngāti Waewae, gets $3 million. Asked if that’s a new ownership model for visitor centres, Allan says: “That’s not really been part of the discussions I’ve had.”
The jobs for nature programme continues to weigh heavily on DoC’s books, as the department manages three related projects worth more than $500 million, spanning five years. About $118 million is expected to be spent on jobs for nature in the next financial year alone.
It’s also a big talking point. Of Allan’s 15 ministerial press statements this year, before today, all but two mentioned it.
Allan said yesterday: “You’ll see more people, more hands on the ground, paid to be doing this work. We as a government, we’re focused on jobs and getting people into good careers.
“We’ve said that conservation and being a conservationist is a career for you if you want to and you can do it right in your backyard.”
DoC’s total budget in the next financial year is $854 million, up from its estimated actual spend this year of $729 million.
