Editorial: Importance of engaging society in pest management
Enhancing community engagement in the South Pacific - Adam Daigneault, Pike Brown and the survey enumeration team in Fiji (see mongoose article). Image - Pike Brown.
If you’ve been involved in pest management activities for more than half a decade, the chances are you recognise the importance of public engagement. The involvement of people in all aspects of pest management is vital for a successful outcome, from discussing best-practice pest control to deliberating whether to reintroduce threatened native biota to a fenced sanctuary. The Department of Conservation’s recent emphasis on community partnerships is just one example of the growing recognition of the role of society in safeguarding New Zealand’s natural heritage for future generations. But what exactly is meant by ‘engaging society’? In this issue of Kararehe Kino, a series of articles are presented that reflect the many facets of such engagement, and how research can help.
As a society, we sanction pest management activities with a goal in mind, so one important aspect is to discover what people value. Peter Tait and Caroline Saunders from Lincoln University highlight the need to understand how farmers, winegrowers, horticulturalists and foresters value native biodiversity as part of New Zealand’s production landscapes in ‘Non-market valuation of New Zealand biodiversity’. And in her article ‘Environmental monitoring framework for New Zealand production lands’, Catriona MacLeod and colleagues from the University of Otago take that concept a step further with their overview of the Sustainability Dashboard – an assessment and reporting tool being developed for monitoring in New Zealand’s production landscapes. The Dashboard provides a framework to help understand the role of activities such as pest control in a much wider context, taking into consideration the needs and values of New Zealand society.
The value that society places on New Zealand’s ‘clean green’ image is highlighted by the many facets of community involvement in pest control activities. In the article ‘What motivates communities to create sanctuaries’, Colin Campbell-Hunt (University of Otago) and John Innes present some of the late Diane Campbell-Hunt’s research on what motivates community groups to get involved with sanctuaries, which are arenas for some of the most intensive pest control for biodiversity conservation. Grant Norbury in ‘Social and biodiversity benefits of predator eradication in a Central Otago community’ and Jim Coleman in ‘Community input into a sanctuary in Abel Tasman national Park’ show how science can help communities engage in large-scale pest control operations in natural ecosystems, and how the presence of iconic native fauna can motivate people – including school children, the next generation of pest managers – to stay involved.
Of course, pest management is not without its challenges. It’s a field that can generate polarised views, especially when it comes to the use of toxins, or when (in the case of large mammals such as deer and feral pigs) one person’s pest is another’s recreational or cultural enjoyment. Alison Greenaway and Bruce Warburton present Alison’s research in the article ‘Communities agencies and 1080’, working with people who are opposed to the use of 1080. You may be surprised by their findings. Kevin Prime and colleagues discuss the role of Māori values – such as cultural harvest – in the context of pest management in ‘Cultural control of possums’. Finally, as pest management always costs money, obtaining funding is a constant battle for pest managers and researchers alike. In their article ‘Economic instruments for management of mongooses in Fiji’, Pike Brown and colleagues show how the use of financial instruments – incentives to engage the public in pest control – can be used to enhance community engagement in the South Pacific, a location that has its fair share of invasive species problems.
Scientists have a long history of engaging end-users who come with a question, and together develop a solution. This is what applied research should be all about, yet it still sometimes fails at the final hurdle: using the results in the real world. The uptake of research by pest managers is an issue that generates huge debate and discussion worldwide. Dean Anderson proposes a solution to this problem in his article ‘How science can guide best-practice pest management’, where, with colleagues from Australia, he describes a novel approach to ensure uptake of research findings by pest managers.
As we write this editorial, a final draft of the ‘Biological Heritage’ National Science Challenge funding proposal is being prepared by researchers from several Crown Research Institutes and universities across New Zealand for submission to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The proposal highlights a very strong emphasis on engaging society in the Challenge; indeed, better engagement with people in order to improve environmental outcomes is one of the top priorities for many of the stakeholders. It also reflects a desire for the research community to work more collaboratively towards common goals than they have in the past – the variety of institutional affiliations among the authors in this issue is testament to that. We hope that you enjoy this issue, and gain a better understanding of the breadth of our research activities in this growing area.
This article was funded by MBIE contestable projects C09X0909 and by core funding for Crown Research Institutes from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employments’ Science and Innovation Group.
Andrea Byrom & John Innes