The Example We Can Follow to Protect Biodiversity
Like no place else on Earth, New Zealand is in a race to save thousands of unique species from extinction.
This week’s action guide is my final dispatch from New Zealand. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ideas for sustainability from this fascinating country. Of all the reasons that protecting the environment is a priority here, perhaps the most noteworthy is its incredible biodiversity—the amazing range of plants, animals, and fungi found here and nowhere else—that rivals such world-renowned ecosystems as the Galapagos Islands. The smart strategies devised to protect Aotearoa’s natural heritage are also being used to secure and enhance our planet’s biological riches. This might help us all take steps to avoid the sixth mass extinction event for life on Earth.
Visitors to New Zealand today are required to comply with strict biosecurity measures, which have managed to keep out such pests as the Queensland and Mediterranean fruit flies. But earlier visitors brought a huge number of non-native species with them, including rats, possums, and stoats. In an ecosystem that evolved without mammals (the only native land mammals in New Zealand are two species of bat), these mammalian invaders have caused incredible environmental damage. With iconic species like the kiwi bird defenseless against these fierce predators, something had to be done, or native species might die out. In 2016, Prime Minister John Key announced an ambitious goal: New Zealand would become Predator Free by 2050.
“Rats, possums, and stoats kill 25 million of our native birds every year and prey on other native species such as lizards and, along with the rest of our environment, we must do more to protect them. That’s why we have adopted this goal. Our ambition is that by 2050, every single part of New Zealand will be completely free of rats, stoats, and possums. This is the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in the world, but we believe if we all work together as a country, we can achieve it.”
—New Zealand Prime Minister John Key
New Zealand has world-class biosecurity measures in place and the political will to not only keep out new biological threats but to eradicate biological threats that have already established themselves. But the biggest opportunity for the country to protect its own native species—and grow its economy—is to keep improving its agricultural practices. One of the distinctive features of New Zealand’s agricultural sector is that approximately zero percent of the fruits, vegetables, and meat it grows are native species—European settlers brought European farming practices and European crops and farm animals. Even its forestry sector, after depleting native trees like kauri and rimu, now relies on plantations of imported species like Monterey pine, Douglas fir, eucalyptus, and California redwood.
While sheep still far outnumber people in New Zealand, pasture is being converted to plantation forests as the demand for wool and lamb declines. While I personally would love to see more of New Zealand’s unnatural pastures be allowed to return to their natural state of native forest rather than become plantation tree farms, economic and political pressures make that difficult. Putting land into conservation protects biodiversity and may boost eco-tourism, but New Zealand still needs food from farms to feed people and wood from forestry to shelter people.
It’s fascinating to see how New Zealand is rebalancing environmental protection with economic opportunity as it changes course under a new, more conservative government. Many of us around the world face this same tension, on a smaller scale, between environmental and financial sustainability in our own households and businesses. In the human society we have built, we want to be environmentally sustainable, but we believe we must be financially sustainable.
But does our civilized worldview, looking out at untamed wilderness, distort the reality of living on Earth? It’s actually the other way around: we want to be financially sustainable, but we must be environmentally sustainable. New Zealand’s history is replete with entrepreneurs attracted by gold, lumber, and land. Many businesses failed to become financially sustainable. Their founders declared bankruptcy but were able to try again, leaving a legacy of triumph over adversity that is a justifiable source of pride for their children, grandchildren, and many generations that followed.
It’s one thing to exhaust our financial resources. That has happened many times in human history, at all scales from a single person to entire empires. But what would happen if we were to exhaust our environmental resources? How would we declare environmental bankruptcy—and how could we possibly recover from such an event?
Seeing how New Zealanders have embraced their natural heritage—even calling themselves kiwis, after the entertaining ground-dwelling birds that live nowhere else on Earth—is a good sign that humanity knows, deep down, that environmental bankruptcy is not an option. Let us hope that New Zealand can find clever ways to continue to cultivate foreign species on its soil while safeguarding its natural heritage. And may their wise example inspire people around the world to save more of our precious environment—as many diverse species as we possibly can—so we may reap invaluable dividends forever.
Dispatches from New Zealand
Every other week, we have been sharing a dispatch from New Zealand showcasing interesting sustainable practices that differ from those in North America. This is our last dispatch before heading back to the United States. Next week, we will continue to publish our series of practical action guides.
Last year, we explored the pathway to sustainable movement, energy, and goods. For the next few weeks, we’re exploring the pathway to sustainable food. From the standard American diet to a healthier plant-centered diet and from industrial farming to regenerative agriculture, stay with us on the journey to sustainability.
References and Further Reading
New Zealand’s unique ecology, Science Learning Hub
The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?, Biological Reviews
Biosecurity, Ministry for Primary Industries
Why we should celebrate NZ’s latest fruit fly detection, University of Auckland
Species unique to New Zealand, Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
New Zealand to be Predator Free by 2050, Beehive.govt.nz
About New Zealand’s forests, Ministry for Public Industries
New Zealand's iconic sheep-to-person ratio keeps falling, RNZ