Tuatara on islands off warming Antarctica? Kokako in Madagascar? Giant weta in Chile? Kiwi in New Guinea?

Monday, 4 December 2017

On the mainland, stoats and ferrets are major predators of hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin) chicks.

OPINION: The yellow-eyed penguin is declining. Its habitat is less suitable than it used to be. Perhaps we should move them?

In the face of global changes in climate and habitat, conservationists are increasingly forced to transfer plants and animals to places outside their native range. We do it a lot already in New Zealand, such as using offshore islands as sanctuaries for species that never lived there. We desperately need to expand the practice.

New Zealand could reverse its biodiversity's decline faster and with greater surety if it exported its threatened plants and animals to the rest of the world.

Tuatara on islands off warming Antarctica? Kokako in Madagascar? Giant weta in Chile? Kiwi in New Guinea?

* Robin set to make its return to Mt Taranaki after 112 year absence

Roaming dogs chasing and mauling nesting birds at Waikanae Estuary

* Foxton Estuary welcome to returning birds comes with warning

* Be careful of dotterel nests on North Piha's beach

* Yellow-eyed penguins at risk due to set net fishery

* 'Yellow-eyed penguins in crisis' march

* 'Marching toward extinction': Yellow-eyed penguin die off**

And if every nation adopted a biodiversity exchange strategy then we would see a net increase in regional biodiversity and, over time, an increase in global biodiversity.

These conclusions flow logically from three rules of ecological science and the inevitability of global changes in habitat and climate.

First, extinction is much less likely when a species has many large populations spread across a great area. Thus, we prevent extinction and rescue our species by increasing population number and size across as many places as possible, and then routinely exchanging breeders between them.

Second, new species evolve when populations of the same species become isolated from each other and adapt to different circumstances. Thus, increasing biodiversity also depends on increasing the number and size of populations in as many different places as possible.

Three, if you reduce the area of wildlife habitat, as we have done in New Zealand, then you reduce the number of species and the number of plants and animals that can be supported. NZ no longer has enough habitat to guarantee a future for all of our biodiversity.

But the world's environments are changing too. Some other nations will become better habitat for our native species and we will become a better environment for theirs.

It follows, therefore, that the chances of conservation success would be much improved by exporting our biodiversity to the rest of the world – increasing population number and size in as many different places as possible.

But some conservationists, even conservation scientists, are horrified at the idea. But why?

Some say that our native species are only 'natural' in NZ, that they don't 'belong' in other places, and other nations species don't 'belong' here.

Xenophobia is disliking people just because they are different and come from another place. It expresses itself in the belief that people from different places should not mix. A similar type of prejudice afflicts conservation.

Ecological science does not support this prejudice. Species routinely interbreed to produce hybrids that adapt to become important parts of ecosystems. And species are always changing where they live because habitats are always changing.

Basically, organisms do what they must do to survive and show no loyalty to varieties or places. If we are serious about recovering and protecting NZ's biodiversity in the face of unprecedented global change then we should be prepared to 'mix it up'.

Others, warn that some NZ species might became invasive in other lands. Would that be bad? A rare species from NZ establishing and becoming common elsewhere is a success, not a failure.

And if one of NZ's endangered species was to become invasive in another nation we would offer to reciprocate the exchange and import and protect some of that nations threatened biodiversity. It's a win-win!

If every nation who generated an invasive species somewhere else imported the species threatened by that invasion we would generate a global community for maximising biodiversity.

We would be selective of which biodiversity to import, of course, just as other nations will be selective of ours. We could take very many rare species from the world's other islands as an obvious example. Those are species in great need of rescue and we are equipped to do it.

A global exchange of biodiversity is superior to our current strategy of trying to protect unsustainably small populations in fragmented reserves. They will always be vulnerable to the inevitable changes and challenges the future will bring.

There is a third reason that conservationists and conservation scientists are horrified by the idea.

They have framed the entire biodiversity debate for politicians and other New Zealanders as a catastrophe – a massive catastrophe.

We have become so dependent on the catastrophe for convincing other people of our importance and the need for extreme policies and actions (like Predator-Free 2050) that we are unable to think beyond our own backyard and to the grander science-informed solutions that are possible.

We appear determined to achieve only small success, while overall biodiversity continues to decline, so that we can always be the rescuers.

Unfortunately, the negative response by conservationists to the idea of globalising biodiversity illustrates that we have started fighting to preserve our catastrophe rather than our biodiversity.

Conservation cannot succeed if it is parochial or does not wean itself from a catastrophe mentality.

We can and must globalise biodiversity to succeed.

Dr Wayne Linklater is Associate Professor of Conservation Science at Victoria University and Director of its Centre for Biodiversity & Restoration Ecology.