We’ve been chasing the wrong pests

New Zealand continues to lose habitat for its plants and animals to industry and agriculture, according to recent research. The conservation movement and Department of Conservation must share the blame.

We have allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked and hijacked by a fruitless predator eradication policy, Predator Free 2050.

In 2016, the National-led government cynically constructed the Predator Free

2050 policy to appeal to the environmental vote, even though it had overseen large declines in our nation’s wilderness.

From 1996 to 2012, New Zealand lost

31,000 hectares of tussock grassland,

24,000 hectares of shrubland and 16,000 hectares of forest. The Ministry for the Environment’s 2018 report and the OECD’s 2017 assessment of New Zealand’s environmental performance, were damning.

We fell for the government’s greenwashing, hook, line and sinker.

By encouraging us to chase the impossible predator-eradication goal, it distracted us from better environmental policies, allowing industry and agriculture to continue degrading habitat, and the air, soil and water quality that sustain our people and our nation’s biodiversity.

Now, under the present Government, which continues to support Predator Free

2050, we learn from Manaaki WhenuaLandcare Research that plant and animal habitat has continued to decline. Another

1471 hectares of tussock grassland and

2304 hectares of forest have been lost since

2012.

Most biodiversity can persist with predators, but no biodiversity can survive in the wild without places to live. So long as we continue to reduce the area of land where biodiversity can live, extinctions will continue.

Even helping our birds and reptiles persist – the biodiversity most vulnerable to predators – does not require eradicating predators everywhere, only some places some of the time. But maintaining wild populations of birds and reptiles are impossible without habitat.

When will conservationists and the Department of Conservation realise that it is grossly negligent to invest in Predator Free 2050? When will they tackle the greater, more serious problem of habitat loss and deteriorating air, soil and water quality?

We are capable now, as a nation, of reversing the disastrous habitat-loss trend, but have chosen not to. Instead, we pursue a goal we are incapable of achieving – nationwide predator eradication.

We could improve protections for habitat on private and public lands, such as they have in Europe and North America, but we let laissez-faire land development continue instead.

Mobilising the public to fruitlessly chase predators in their backyards, or using the Predator Free 2050 policy to justify spreading more poisons across more of our declining wild places and living spaces, is fiddling while Rome burns.