biodiversity

Indigenous vegetation fragments in agricultural landscapes are vulnerable to creeping edge effects and stochastic extinctions on top of the effects of historic land use and disturbance which have already resulted in significant changes to baselines. Agricultural intensification can potentially increase these threats through spillover of nutrients, water, and weeds, especially in dryland ecosystems which are naturally low in nitrogen and soil moisture.

The incorporation of native, woody vegetation into New Zealand’s agricultural ecosystems offers a “nature-based solution” approach for mitigating poor environmental outcomes of land use practices, biodiversity loss, and the accelerating effects of climatic change. However, to achieve this at scale requires a systematic framework for scoping, assessing, and targeting native revegetation opportunities in a way that addresses national-scale priorities, supports landscape-scale ecological processes, and recognises that land use decisions are made at farm-scales by landowners.

While global climate change is impacting biota across the world, New Zealand’s maritime climate is highly variable and relatively mild, so climate change is sometimes seen as a minimal threat to species and ecosystems especially in comparison to the more immediate threat of invasive species. However, climate change will alter rainfall patterns, increase the incidence and severity of extreme events, and gradually increase temperatures which will all modify terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems.

The Westland petrel (Procellaria westlandica) is a 1200 g medium-sized seabird whose breeding colonies are dispersed across 700 ha of forest on the western coast of South Island, New Zealand. These birds represent the sole landscape-scale lowland remnant of formerly widespread petrel and shearwater colonies in mainland New Zealand and provide an opportunity to investigate maritime species’ impact on terrestrial ecosystems characteristic of pre-human New Zealand.

Relying solely on public conservation lands for habitat provision will be inadequate for achieving national conservation goals. Production landscapes in New Zealand make up 60% of the land area and contain potential conservation habitat; however, the amount of native vegetation they contain is poorly known. While there have been previous assessments of native vegetation cover in New Zealand, no study has undertaken a national-scale assessment of multiple native vegetation cover types on different land uses. This absence limits the potential to manage production landscapes for conservation.

The New Zealand Department of Conservation is responsible for biodiversity management over approximately one-third of New Zealand’s land area and a network of marine protected areas; it also has a more general role in managing protected species and biodiversity advocacy. In 2004 the Department of Conservation began the development of a national natural heritage monitoring framework known as the New Zealand Biodiversity Assessment Framework, which has been operational since 2011.

Pastoral farming is the dominant land use in New Zealand today and is under considerable domestic social and political pressure to reduce its environmental footprint. In this article, we explore options to enhance native biodiversity conservation within New Zealand pastoral systems. We argue that there is strong synergistic interdependence between biodiversity conservation and pastoral farming and suggest that it is possible to have win-win outcomes for both.

Little is known about the impact of aerial 1080 control on nesting success and abundance of birds. The South Island (SI) robin (Petroica australis) is vulnerable to predation by exotic mammals, with declining populations on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand.

Kei te ngaro haere ngā tohu taiao o Aotearo o te ao whānui hoki, pēnei i te wai ora. Ko te mate hoki kāre e āro ana te tangata me pēhea e whakatika, mā wai, me pēhea e whakarite, ka patua tonu. I te tau rua mano tekau ma iwa ka whakaetia te Kāwanatanga me tū te awa o Whanganui hei tangata i raro anō i tōna ake mana. Ahakoa he mea rerekē tēnei ki te ao Pākeha, ehara ki tō te tikanga Māori. Ko te kaupapa o tēnei tuhituhi he pātai mena koianei te huarahi, ina ra te whakatangata i ngā tohu taiao kia rite ai ki te ture Pākeha, kia ngāwari ake te whakatikatika haere.

Globally, biodiversity is declining due to increasing populations and land use pressures associated with development-induced land conversion, resource use, and food production. In New Zealand, a considerable proportion of remaining indigenous biodiversity occurs on farmland in private ownership outside of the public conservation land.