QEII covenants set to dry up without funding boost
Friday, 7 February 2025
In a blow to New Zealand’s biodiversity, future nature covenants are under threat if a national trust can’t find extra money.
With baseline government funding unchanged for a decade, fresh QEII covenants are set to all but stop by the middle of the year.
The covenants on private land include areas with threatened species and have been described as a significant part of New Zealand’s biodiversity.
State funding is by far the largest component of the QEII Trust’s income, with its latest annual report showing $4,274,000 in baseline funding.
A further $8m boost over four years from Jobs for Nature is ending this year, and the trust is looking at potentially cutting staff.
“You can only absorb so much, and then you have to take stock of things and say we can't carry on as we are,” chair Alan Livingston said.
He was confident the trust could continue to monitor existing covenants, which cover more than 180,000 hectares of private land, protecting it in perpetuity.
But the immediate prospects of adding to the more than 5000 covenants appeared dim without increased funding.
The trust has suggested it could be granted a proportion of the international tourist levy to enable it to continue covenanting.
The levy was raised from $35 to $100 in October, with a total estimated take of $230 million.
Livingston said $3-4m annually would be enough to be able to continue adding new covenants at a rate of about 150 a year.
He said the privately owned QEII areas were, in many cases, providing a public benefit and cited the much-photographed Remarkables Station near Queenstown and the Miranda birdlife reserve.
“Whenever we talk to [Conservation] minister [Tama] Potaka or the Doc hierarchy or Federated Farmers or anyone else, everyone says what a fantastic job is being done, how important it is.”
Livingston was hoping to hear about any possible funding boost through the tourism levy by May, rather than have to start downsizing.
“You can't turn the tap back on again straight away,” he said. “The sooner the better that we got an indication. But if we got it by, say, early May, we could ramp it up pretty damn quickly.”
Prominent Waikato environmental scientist and regional councillor Bruce Clarkson said the covenants were important because they mostly applied in lowland and coastal zones.
Those areas were underrepresented in the Doc estate and had held the country’s richest biodiversity.
There was also a greater presence of threatened species in QEII covenants than most Doc estate because coastal and lowland zones were devastated by land clearance and degradation.
“It’s a significant part of the jigsaw puzzle of how we look after New Zealand’s biodiversity.”
The trust’s independence meant it could build relationships with landowners.
“The majority of landowners do not want to deal with the government agency who regulates them,” Clarkson said.
“A regional council or a district council or Department of Conservation could never have achieved the level of success that's been achieved by QEII.”
Clarkson said the trust was underfunded like the rest of the conservation sector.
Federated Farmers has called on the Government to double its trust funding.
Waikato president Keith Holmes said the covenants were essentially a gift to the nation by farmers, with an element of government support.
“More often than not, the farmers have done the fencing and the weed protection and pest control and that sort of thing off their own bat.”
He said during the time that the trust’s allocation had been capped, Doc funding had almost doubled, and thought the trust was being “humble” in asking for $3-4m.
“I think that’s the least,” he said. “I’d be asking for 10 million.”
An emailed response to the Waikato Times from conservation minister Tama Potaka acknowledged the trust’s work, and referred to the additional Jobs for Nature funding it had received.
“Any decisions about future funding will be considered by Ministers in due course,” the email said.