Regional Biomanagement Snapshot

Introduction

Regional and unitary councils deliver biodiversity and biosecurity functions as part of our core business. Animals and plants, pests and weeds don’t respect boundaries, so we must work together across our boundaries and jurisdictions to be effective. We’ve been joining forces and working collaboratively as a sector for decades.

Our sector work focuses on adding value to improve our home council programmes and working together for bigger impact. We always aim to work together, find efficiencies and share costs where we can.

We have amazing capability across the sector. Our many skilled people deliver and contribute to our biodiversity and biosecurity services, including ecologists, botanists, biosecurity specialists, data scientists, policy experts and operational managers.

We connect across the biomanagement SIGs to develop shared tools, drive joint work, undertake strategic planning and share knowledge and expertise.

The purpose of the Biomanagers SIG and its working groups is:

To address biodiversity and biosecurity issues and opportunities and provide solutions that enable collective action within and between regions, and nationally. Ultimately, we seek to enable individual councils to improve biodiversity and biosecurity outcomes across the regions.

The Biomanagers' five-year strategic focus areas are:

View the Biomanagement 2026 Plenary Poster

We can't do this alone - working with our system partners is essential

We can’t do this alone. Effective biomanagement depends on councils working with tangata whenua, communities, landowners, central government, researchers, businesses and conservation organisations. Regional and unitary councils connect these partners at the place level, while also contributing operational experience, scientific capability and regional knowledge to national programmes and policy development.

Through Te Uru Kahika and the Biomanagers network, we work closely with system partners including the Department of Conservation, Biosecurity New Zealand, the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport, and Land Information New Zealand. These relationships support coordinated action across boundaries, joint investment and delivery at the scale needed to make a measurable difference as reflected in the system-wide collaborative plans, Action for Nature: Implementation Plan for Te Mana o Te Taiao and Biosecurity System Action Plan.

Protecting and restoring our biodiversity

Biodiversity efforts protect and restore our unique indigenous species and ecosystems. We all rely on healthy ecosystems to provide fresh water, clean air, climate resilience, cultural values, recreational opportunities and important resources. Hence, we must do everything we can to help them flourish.

The 2017 Enfocus report, Addressing New Zealand's Biodiversity Challenge, commissioned by the Biomanagement SIG, found that indigenous biodiversity continues to decline, amounting to "intervention failure." It frames biodiversity loss as a genuine wicked problem.

The report identifies five shifts needed to turn this around:

• stronger national and regional leadership with clearer accountability
• building on regional councils' comparative advantage in operational pest management rather than regulation alone
• better prioritisation and monitoring information
• genuine joined-up planning and funding across councils, DOC, iwi and the private/philanthropic sector
• modernising a fragmented, tenure-divided legislative framework that currently lacks a coherent, shared purpose for maintaining biodiversity across public and private land alike

As a sector, we work together to improve across these five areas, alongside our system partners. We have strong science capability, established relationships with landowners and communities, and a long track record of running pest control programmes, which is now considered the single biggest lever against biodiversity decline, given how dominant animal and plant pests are as a threat and how climate change is expected to exacerbate them.

Working together on biosecurity for bigger impact

Regional and unitary authorities bring regional operational expertise to the table. In particular, we provide operational capacity and local relationships that Biosecurity New Zealand doesn't have, and we’re the only ones working across private land directly with landowners.

So, we take the role of delivery arm on several large national programmes, which bring in national funding to solve regional issues.

For example, wilding conifers are a significant issue for biodiversity and landscapes. We secured national funding in the mid 2010s to bolster regional control efforts and now work together under the National Wilding Conifer Management Strategy.

Since 2016, around 80% of the total known infestation area nationally has received at least one round of control work.

We have made fantastic inroads, but lots of work still needs to be done to maintain the gains.

Shared tools

We also develop and maintain shared control, training, data and information tools that enhance our capability. This shares the cost and benefit across councils, and we get a much bigger bang for our buck!

The incredible value of regional biosecurity efforts

Our recently released ‘Biosecurity Benefits’ report details the economic value that our collective biosecurity programmes deliver to Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Ratepayers pay 78% of a $142 million annual insurance premium to avoid a $1.7 billion loss.”

Regional and unitary authorities collectively invest approximately $142 million per year in biosecurity programmes across 13.2 million hectares of productive land. 

These programmes protect around $34 billion of annual primary-sector GDP. 

Councils fund approximately 78% of biosecurity programme costs, despite many benefits accruing nationally through increased productivity, export performance and biodiversity outcomes. 

Independent analysis found that biosecurity programmes consistently generate positive economic returns across all regions studied.

The strongest evidence shows returns of:

• $22 returned for every $1 invested over 10 years
• Up to $128 returned for every $1 invested over 50 years.

A five-year disruption to regional biosecurity programmes—considered the most plausible risk under structural reform—would generate an estimated $2.1 billion cost to the New Zealand economy.

Regional biosecurity generates significant biodiversity outcomes as a co-benefit of protecting primary production. This is through the same operations, relationships, and institutional capability that underpins pest management. Most of these benefits are not captured in the headline economic estimates, such as:

• kiwi recoveries
• native canopy restoration
• lizard rebounds

Let's connect

Biomanagers co-convenors:

Dan Harrison daniel.harrison@trc.govt.nz 

Judith Earl-Goulet judith.earl-goulet@ecan.govt.nz 

Biodiversity Working Group co-convenors:

Alastair Jamieson alastair.jamieson@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz 

James Griffin jamesg@nrc.govt.nz 

Biosecurity Working Group co-convenors:

Patrick Whaley patrick.whaley@waikatoregion.govt.nz 

Libby Caldwell libby.caldwell@orc.govt.nz 

Virtual Office contact:

Chris Keeling chris.keeling@teurukahika.govt.nz