By ANNE BESTON
The distinctive call of the kokako was once heard all over the Hunua Ranges in South Auckland. Today, a tiny clutch of just 23 birds battle for survival in an area of a few hundred hectares.
The kokako, at fewer than 400 pairs nationwide, is just one of the targets of a strategy the Government released yesterday to try to halt the decline of New Zealand's natural environment.
Our Chance to Turn the Tide, launched in Wellington by Environment Minister Marian Hobbs and Conservation Minister Sandra Lee, is a blueprint to try to save species such as the kokako and the kiwi and to restore important ecosystems.
But conservationists questioned where the money for the strategy was coming from because the 140-page document does not mention it.
"The draft document had costings and I just expected the ministers would at least explain or address the costings issue but they didn't," said the director of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, Kevin Smith.
"This is an excellent document but ultimately it depends on being underpinned by a substantial increase in funding."
Forest and Bird put the cost of implementation at $50 million a year for the next 10 years.
The draft strategy, drawn up by National, put the cost at an extra $37 million to $45 million a year.
Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said her party would reserve judgment until the dollars were allocated.
"The plan is good but it simply must be reflected in the finances provided," she said.
"Without the finances to support these goals they are meaningless."
Sandra Lee has said that an extra $16 million for the Department of Conservation would be a starting bid in the round of negotiations for the June Budget.
The department's 1999 budget was $157 million.
Our Chance to Turn the Tide contains some alarming facts and figures: some species of fungi, insects, worms and molluscs could be headed for extinction when scientists have not even identified them yet; 1000 known plant, animal and fungi species are on the threatened list; New Zealand has one of the worst records for biodiversity loss of any country.
Biodiversity is all biological life - plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms - the genes they contain and their land and water ecosystems.
Already in New Zealand the list of extinct species includes 32 per cent of indigenous land and freshwater birds, including the huia and the laughing owl; 18 per cent of sea birds; three of seven frogs; at least 12 invertebrates, including snails and insects, and one fish, one bat, three reptiles and possibly 11 plants.
The document seeks to have 10 per cent of New Zealand's marine environment protected by 2010 and will end logging of native forests on Crown-owned land on the West Coast.
The strategy's goal is to halt the decline of New Zealand's natural environment and in some cases restore it.
"While not saving all the populations, it could secure the kiwi genetic pool and mean that kiwi will continue to live in the wild," Prime Minister Helen Clark said at yesterday's launch. The Government had made a decision to strengthen this effort, and in the case of the kiwi would seek to stem the decline of all six varieties across their natural range, with stepped-up intensive management in new sanctuaries.
Without such intervention, the present halving of the kiwi population every decade would mean that in 20 years many populations among the 50,000 birds now left on the mainland would effectively be extinct.
DoC's briefing papers to the incoming Clark Government earlier this year said it needed an extra $45 million to $55 million to stop further biodiversity decline.
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