| The New Zealand
Biodiversity Strategy 2000 funding package committed an extra $57 million
for controlling animal pests and weeds on public conservation lands between
2000 and 2005. Pest and weed control on these lands is carried out by the
Department of Conservation.
The additional funding will mean a 150 per cent increase in invasive
weed control and enhanced efforts to control introducing browsing pests
such as possums and goats.
This work is helping to ensure the survival of threatened native plants
and animals, and means a greater area and range of natural habitats and
ecosystems will be protected from animal pests and weeds. It is being
focused on areas of the highest biodiversity value, which are facing the
greatest threat.
Introduced animal pests and weeds pose the greatest single threat to
biodiversity on land. Browsing and grazing animals such as goats, deer and
possums eat native plants, prevent re-growth and compete with native birds,
bats and invertebrates for food.
Possums are also predators of native birds including their eggs and
chicks and native invertebrates such as our unique land snails. Weeds
threaten the survival of about 60 threatened native plants.
Measures being funded by the strategy’s $34.37 million animal pests
control programme include additional control of critical animal pests in
important conservation areas, establishment of a freshwater fish pest
management framework, control strategies and actions, and work on a number
of national technical issues concerning the long–term sustainability of
animal pest control methods.
In some cases the objective is to contain the spread of specific pests or
eradicate them where feasible. In most cases work funded by biodiversity
strategy funding complements existing pest control programmes using existing
national control plans where appropriate (e.g. possum, goat, Himalayan thar).
The strategy’s $22.76 million weed control programme seeks to protect
indigenous biodiversity from the threat of invasive weeds through specific
control initiatives, field surveillance and site inventories.
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