behaviour change

Understanding farmer behaviour and drivers for behaviour change will be the key to bringing about practice change, such as increasing management and enhancement of native biodiversity on-farm. Farmer participation in biodiversity protection and management is a critical challenge for both national conservation outcomes and achieving more sustainable farm systems.

Despite one-third of New Zealand’s landmass being protected as public conservation land, the country still faces significant conservation challenges. Nearly 50% of the country’s landmass has been converted to pastoral farming, and biological invasions pose a sustained and growing threat to remaining biodiversity across all land tenures. Managing and protecting biodiversity on-farm provides vast opportunities to create nature-rich pastoral landscapes.