Biodiversity
Outcome: improved measurement, management and protection of New Zealand’s terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity, including in the conservation estate
Regional councils’ biodiversity monitoring framework
Following collaboration with the Department of Conservation to develop a national biodiversity monitoring and reporting framework, adopted by the Department in June 2010, our researchers have been working with regional councils to agree on a suite of indicators for a regional-scale monitoring of the condition and trend in terrestrial biodiversity.
‘Regional councils have been under pressure to meet their biodiversity reporting obligations under the Resource Management Act (1991) and they want an effective system to quantify biodiversity trends,’ says Ecosystem Processes Science Team Leader Rob Allen.
An Envirolink grant is funding the design and implementation plan for the framework. Once in place the framework will assist councils to assess the effectiveness of different policy and regulatory approaches, decide where to allocate limited resources and provide greater accountability for rates expenditure, and make improvements to the protection of indigenous biodiversity.
Over the next two years, researchers will begin developing the tools that enable all regional councils to report consistently on terrestrial biodiversity, contributing to a more scientifically sound and informative picture at the regional scale, with data integrated more readily with the Department of Conservation’s work at the national scale and State of the Environment reporting by the Ministry for the Environment.