Protect what we have: New DoC head says diversity is the goal – environmentally, and around the table
Friday, 11 February 2022
Standing on the shore of Kāpiti Island 20 years ago sounded much as it does today. Waves, wind in the trees, and, most noticeably, birdsong; kākā and gulls and, at night, kiwi.
Penny Nelson raised her first child in the shade of its trees. With the baby in a backpack, she paced the trails through the bush around the island’s perimeter.
Two decades on, the island is even more of a sanctuary, although Nelson no longer lives there. Instead, from an office across a short stretch of water in Wellington, she heads the department tasked with caring not only for the island itself, but for a third of New Zealand’s land and all of its indigenous species.
The role of director-general at the Department of Conservation is Nelson’s “dream job”. She is the first woman to head the agency – taking over from Lou Sanson in November, stepping down as deputy director-general of Biosecurity New Zealand at the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).
**READ MORE:
* Why Kāpiti Coast is one for the birds
* Penny Nelson appointed as new director-general of Department of Conservation
**
The daughter of a father who ran a stock and station firm, she and her younger brother grew up in Canterbury. The family moved a lot, settling in country towns where there were more cows than kea.
When she met her husband, Pete, he was a DOC ranger on Kāpiti Island. They moved in together, and had their son soon after. “I will never forget going home on the boat surrounded by dolphins.
'The Plunket nurse wanted to do a lot of extra visits,” she says with a laugh, “and I was really popular in my antenatal group because coming out to Kāpiti for the day with your kids was fun.”
Seeing the skill and passion rangers had for their work, be it caring for a threatened species, setting up their own water collection system, or launching a boat in a storm, she remembers thinking they were “the sort of people I wanted to work with”. These days, when the daily grind in the office takes its toll, she visits her staff out in the field and gets stuck in.
At that time, Nelson was working for the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) as a policy analyst, spending half her time at home in what her colleagues dubbed “the Kāpiti office”, and the other half in town.
After three years, they moved back into Wellington for Nelson to take another role at the ministry. “It was at the time when we were just starting to think about what sustainability looked like in New Zealand.
“We were looking at what government could do in terms of good practice around things like climate change, and in really working with the business community on thinking about the environment – that triple bottom line reporting [social, environmental and financial] when people weren't doing it.”
Throughout her career, she’s become adept at bringing together diverse groups of people, often with different bottom lines, and figuring out how to please everyone.
She held management roles at Landcare Research (2007-08), DairyNZ (2008-10), the Ministry of Social Development (2010-12), and the Sustainable Business Council (2012-16), before joining the MFE.
“What I got out of Biosecurity New Zealand is that it's a big operational business. And if you find a pest, you've got to move really fast and in a really disciplined, focused way to get the result.
“And I think it's really similar in conservation. Where we've got gains it's because we've really focused our effort, been really clear on what we need to do, and got on with it.”
So many native taonga are at risk of extinction. “If we lose them from here, they're gone forever. And a lot of those really special things are on public conservation land.”
Climate change would bring challenges for biodiversity. In the past year, droughts in the North Island had affected the ability of kiwi to find food and water, and the changing climate could alter the seasonal rhythms of native plants.
“We've done some work, but I think we've got more to do around really understanding; How's the climate changing? How is that going to affect our forests and our special species and our infrastructure for tourism?”
In the midst of that, another question was paramount. “How do we be an honourable Treaty partner?
“Within our legislation we're required to apply the principles of the Treaty, and we’re working out how you do that in a really practical way.”
The future of conservation is in bringing people in, Nelson says – nothing can be achieved unless everyone is on the same page.
Nestled among the unassuming offices of Conservation House is a workshop, which Nelson compares to the workshop of Q, from James Bond. New tracking and surveillance gear is made and tested here, which is now being used for the endangered kākāpō on offshore islands.
Hands-on conservation work by rangers on offshore islands, combined with policy written by people in offices half a country away and this new technology, mean populations have the best chance of survival.
“If you line up the whole business to do something, like saving that species, we get really innovative, and really creative.”
Nelson had just returned from Hokitika on the West Coast, where she met a representative for the families affected by the Pike River Mine disaster. They spoke about how important the Paparoa Track, created as a memorial to the 29 miners who lost their lives in 2010, had been for the community, and the pride it brought them amid the continuing trauma.
It also reinforced her determination to carry on Sanson’s legacy of health and safety.
While new projects, like the proposed Wainuiomata Sanctuary, are exciting, her priority for now is protecting and maximising the assets they already have – changes to the way stewardship land is protected would be a big part of this.
“We have really got to focus on our predator control and our browser control,” she says. “If you have things eating forests faster than they can regenerate, you're pretty stuffed.”
Collaboration with organisations like the New Zealand Game Animal Council and other ministries is key to making a real difference – even when that means engaging with those entities notoriously embroiled in environmental debates, like Fonterra. Getting them on board was no less important.
“A lot of precious things are on conservation land, [but also] on sheep and beef and dairy farms,” she says.
We will never reach our conservation goals by alienating and blaming those who have the biggest influence. “I think you have to really walk in their shoes, and then work out how you help, [and] how you work with people to get what is important.
“And I know that we've got a minister who's just so supportive and excited about that, and will back us to the hilt.”
What will New Zealand look like when we’ve won the environmental fight? “I think about it as its resilience. The more diverse trees that you have in a forest, the more able it's going to be able to deal with shocks, like climate change.
“And it’s not just about saving all the lovely things, it's actually critical for our economy. We will not have a primary sector without biodiversity.”
The gains made in the last two decades were already palpable. “When we went on to Kāpiti, the possum boys had just finished. And at that time, if people from Wellington really wanted to get a sense of birdlife like that, they had to book a permit to go out to Kāpiti.
“We moved to Christchurch for seven years again after we came off Kāpiti, and then we came back. And I couldn't believe the difference […] because of all the pest control. And I think that living example for Wellington of what you get when you do that pest control has made people incredibly connected to nature.
“I look at it now as I walk into Zealandia every Sunday” – a weekly routine with a group of friends. “I see lots of New Zealanders out there, just loving it. And people can be sitting in their houses, anywhere in Wellington, and you'll see kākā and hear moreporks at night.”
To the west, Kāpiti Island continues to thrive, rangers walk those same tracks, and species translocations ensure the birdsong grows more diverse with each passing year.