DOC’s focus - Annual Review 2023-24

Date:  09 December 2024

Tēnā koutou katoa

Today I am joined by my senior leadership team:

• Henry Weston, Deputy Director-General Regional Operations
• Stephanie Rowe, Deputy Director-GeneralBiodiversity, Heritage and Visitors
• Ruth Isaac, Deputy Director-General Policy and Regulatory Services
• Mike Tully, Deputy Director-General Organisation support
• Tame Malcom, Deputy Director-General Treaty Relationships
• Sia Aston, Deputy Director-General Public Affairs

I want to set the scene of what DOC’s achieved, what the challenges are and where we’re heading – will take the full 10 minutes.

This year we refreshed our strategy, and our new purpose is Toitū te Taiao – we protect and restore nature.

We are focused on being the best we can be and mobilising others to take action for nature.

I’m really proud of what DOC staff have achieved this year, in challenging circumstances.

Biodiversity

Our National Predator Control Programme achieved its best ever results.

We adapted quickly to an unexpected beech mast and delivered 28 aerial 1080 operations across 735,000 hectares. Monitoring shows rats were consistently reduced to undetectable or very low levels, stoats and possums were effectively controlled. Mice were also routinely reduced to low levels, giving relief to native insects and lizards.

Our interventions have seen bumper breeding seasons for tara iti, kākāriki, northern Royal Albatross, kakī, and sea lion pups in Dunedin.

We completed the largest and most ambitious marine fieldwork season ever undertaken in subantarctic region.

We ramped up our wild animal management to give forests more chance to regenerate. We delivered over 1.2 million hectares of wild goat control in 23/24 and 140,000 hectares of wild deer control.

Visitors and recreation

We built and repaired a lot of visitor assets, including huts, tracks and bridges, after repeated storm damage and Cyclone Gabrielle.

We’ve recently opened a new great walk at Tuatapere Hump Ridge, and reopened Cathedral Cove. We said we would open it in early December and despite interruptions with bad weather and people ignoring track closures – we did it.

Auckland’s Te Henga walkway’s been reopened, Godley Head has been cleaned up, and we have a new visitor centre for Punakaiki.

We are ready for summer visitors.

Treaty partnership

We’ve achieved more for conservation by working with our Treaty partners. For example:

• With Ngāti Porou and Te Whanaū a Apanui, we’ve delivered pest control in Raukūmara, to help protect over 117,000 hectares from pests.
• On Matiu Somes Island in Wellington, we worked with the kaitiaki board to replace a wharf on time and on budget. And to ensure sustainable visitation to the island.
• And alongside Te Roroa we’re protecting kauri by replacing infrastructure.

Internally, we’ve set up a specialist asset management unit and made big improvements to our IT systems and network.

We have done all this while achieving savings of $47.2 m in the past year, and keeping our staff engaged.

The Minister of Conservation has given us four clear priorities

• Targeting investment in high value conservation areas
• Improving the regulatory system
• Exploring new revenue options so we’re financially sustainable
• And maintaining and building positive working relationships with Māori.

In terms of high value conservation areas – the first thing we did is work to better understand the value of nature.

Research shows the ecosystem services that public conservation land provides, such as fresh air, quality soil, clean water and pollinators are worth around $11 billion per year.

The natural and physical capital on conservation land is currently worth $133 billion, with National Parks worth $12.6 billion to New Zealanders.

On top of that, tourism on public conservation land is worth around $3.4 billion a year and supports regional economies through jobs and visitors spending money in communities.

These numbers are significant and yet they only cover the third of NZ’s land area that we currently protect.

This suggests to me that nature is New Zealand’s biggest asset. It’s vital for the economy. It’s also our insurance policy against climate change.

Healthy forests will prevent downstream impacts on urban areas during severe storms.

Nature is also important of course, for its own sake, and because spending time is good for us physically and mentally.

New Zealand thrives if we preserve, protect and restore nature.

We have a new approach to the way we do our biodiversity planning.

As you know, native species are in trouble – we’ve worked out it would cost $2.3 billion to manage all threatened species to persistence, which is way beyond our means.

So we are getting smarter and deliberately targeting our investment towards efforts that make the biggest difference. That means:

• Investing more money into species at the top of the cliff, the ones we could lose if we don’t take action
• Focusing on protecting our offshore islands from pest incursions – because they’re safe havens for vulnerable species
• Shifting more into managing threats across representative ecosystems and landscapes – we need more space for species to thrive – and they don’t pay attention to boundaries
• Developing new tools, techniques and carrying out research to support our decisions.

We have developed a new biodiversity planning tool that guides us on where we need to invest and will help us measure how successful our management is.

• This will be a game changer once it’s fully implemented in the next year.
• It maps our current spend, gives us clear priorities against the key work programmes (species, threats, ecosystems, obligations and research)
• It will help us develop clear target and objectives that will flow through to multi-year plans
• This tool will give us more information on the tough choices and trade-offs that need to be made to protect native plants, birds, insects and taonga species.

In terms of improving our regulatory system – we have put out a discussion document about making the conservation management system simpler.

We have agreed clear key performance targets with the Minister, and already, we’ve had an 80% increase in the number of permissions applications we’re processing each week.

While we’ve been modernising the way we work, we’ve also been inputting into the Fast-Track legislation and standing up how we will implement it.

For the priority about generating revenue – we have put out a discussion document about charging access to some areas and are doing a car-parking trial.

We’ve launched a nature prospectus to encourage business and philanthropists to invest in projects that extend or accelerate the core work we are already doing.

We are future proofing our visitor network, so it meets the changing needs of visitors and is more affordable, and we’re working on a mobilising for nature programme to get all New Zealanders to invest in nature.

The final priority is about maintaining and building positive working relationships with Māori.

DOC has over 3380 Crown monitored settlement commitments – 89% of them are either on track or have been completed.

We are holding 20 hui before Christmas to discuss the consultation documents to modernise the conservation system.

To sum up

It’s been a challenging year, but we have delivered against our priorities.

We expect to have more challenges next year – like all Government departments we’re being asked to absorb inflation and salaries, which means our baseline is dropping.

We will continue to prioritise our work carefully.

And we are focused on becoming a more innovative organisation, that achieves great things for nature, energises our people, and mobilises others to care and invest in nature too.

I look forward to discussing this work with you further.

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa,

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