Context

The New Zealand government recently re-affirmed its commitment to halting the decline in biodiversity by increasing the funding available to the Department of Conservation (DOC) in the 2018 budget for conserving native biodiversity. Native species and the ecosystems they inhabit are vulnerable to a variety of threats that must be managed to ensure we maintain our natural heritage. Integrating management of threatened species with ecosystem management plans is an efficient and effective way of ensuring the protection of both the species and ecosystem components of our biodiversity.

The conservation status of New Zealand species is assessed on a five-yearly basis using the New Zealand Threat Classification System (NZTCS). DOC determines which species require management based on this assessment. Many species requiring management occur in places designated Ecosystem Management Units (EMUs) and are likely to benefit from work currently undertaken by DOC and our partners to improve the ecological health of those sites. In some cases, species require specific management within EMUs and/or at places outside of EMUs known as Species Management Units (SMUs).

DOC is collecting advice from species experts about the management standards and distribution of sites required to ensure the long-term persistence of approximately 700 taxa identified as requiring conservation management. This factsheet uses that advice to evaluate which taxa are likely to persist given the management planned in 2017-2018. It includes information about management at sites that meets the minimum management standards prescribed by species experts. Because there is uncertainty about management standards for some species, information is also included about management at sites that meets the approximate standards (within 10% of the specified standard) identified by species experts.

Key findings

DOC has collated expert advice about site-based conservation management needs of 481 Threatened, At Risk or Conservation Dependent taxa. This excludes marine species where management often entails national or international policy negotiation. Migratory fish, freshwater invertebrates, fungi and most lichens, mosses, liverworts and hornworts have not yet been integrated into the system. Small and cryptic taxa are expected to benefit from management to protect the full range of ecosystems but are unlikely to be the subject of specific management plans.
A total of 525 Threatened, At Risk or Conservation Dependent taxa are likely to benefit from management in at least one site (Table 1). This management is not always specifically targeted to the species requirements, but generally aims to maintain ecosystem health and function.
Of these 525 taxa, 248 receive management that meets the specific standards required for the species in at least one management unit.
290 taxa receive management that meets the approximate standards required for the species in at least one management unit.
83 taxa receive management that meets the specific standards required for the species at nearly all (90%) of the sites recommended by experts to ensure species long-term persistence.
99 taxa receive management that meets the approximate standards required for the species at nearly all (90%) of the sites recommended by experts to ensure species long-term persistence.

Table 1: Number of Threatened, At Risk or Conservation Dependent (CD) taxa managed in EMUs or SMUs
Threat status	Any management at any site	Management to standard at any site	Management to approximate standard at any site	Management to standard at all required sites	Management to approximate standard at all required sites
Threatened	352	148	178	45	55
At Risk/CD	173	100	112	38	44
Total	525	248	290	83	99

Table 2: Number of Threatened, At Risk or Conservation Dependent (CD) taxa managed in EMUs or SMUs by taxonomic group.
Group	Any management at any site	Management to standard at any site	Management to approximate standard at any site	Management to standard at all required sites	Management to approximate standard at all required sites
Bats	4	3	4	0	0
Birds	59	40	45	8	9
Coleoptera	17	3	3	0	1
Freshwater fish	32	8	9	0	0
Frogs	6	0	1	0	0
Land Snails	54	1	1	1	1
Lepidoptera	18	2	6	1	2
Mosses	2	0	0	0	0
Orthoptera	21	15	15	10	10
Powelliphanta	45	23	27	8	8
Reptiles	59	34	38	10	14
Spiders	4	1	1	0	0
Vascular Plants	204	118	140	45	54
Total	525	248	290	83	99

Table 3: Number of Threatened, At Risk or Conservation Dependent taxa managed in EMUs or SMUs by conservation status.
Conservation status	Any management at any site	Management to standard at any site	Management to approximate standard at any site	Management to standard at all required sites	Management to approximate standard at all required sites
Nationally Critical	152	64	77	30	34
Nationally Endangered	89	33	41	7	10
Nationally Vulnerable	111	51	60	8	11
Declining	71	37	42	3	4
Recovering	22	17	20	4	5
Relict	19	10	13	2	5
Naturally Uncommon	56	31	32	28	29
Not Threatened	5	5	5	1	1
Total	525	248	290	83	99

Definition and methodology

These tables were produced by relating:

Management actions that were allocated funding in 719 EMU and SMUs in DOCs Business Planning and Reporting System in the 2017/18 financial year;
Information about the locations of threatened taxa populations and the threats (or pressures) requiring management to ensure persistence, elicited from more than 80 subject matter specialists and stored in an internal DOC Database; and
Information about the threat status of species in the New Zealand Threat Classification System database as of June 2018.

Quantitative measurements demonstrating outcomes for threatened species population viability were not incorporated into this analysis.

Data quality

This measure is classified as supporting information.

The New Zealand Threat Classification System (Townsend et al., 2008) is a qualitative process that uses the judgement of specialists who assess the conservation status of species according to their risk of extinction within New Zealand at 5-yearly intervals. Thus, the quality and availability of scientific information to support the threat listing process varies between species and species groups. Similar limits apply to the advice collated by DOC about species management needs. There is uncertainty as to whether the actions described and funded in each management prescription in June 2017 were delivered to standard.

Relevance

This measure relates to indicator 1.4.2 - Security of threatened and at risk taxa

Accuracy

This measure complies with the data quality guidelines used in New Zealand’s Environmental Reporting framework.

Outcomes Monitoring Framework

DOC’s Outcomes Monitoring Framework provides a platform on which DOC and others can assess outcomes in a clear, structured and transparent way (Lee et al., 2005). It has been developed as a logical hierarchy that is based on broad, overarching Outcomes, beneath which are nested Outcome Objectives, Indicators, Measures and Data Elements to provide ever increasing levels of detail. The framework is scalable, as the indicators and measures remain compatible and consistent whether applied locally, regionally or nationally. The recently updated framework provides a roadmap for gathering information to meet the specific objectives of DOC and other agencies (McGlone and Dalley, 2015). The provision of a national framework with agreed outcomes, indicators and measures supports collaboration with land management and regulatory agencies, allowing for more integrated environmental policy and ‘State of the Environment’ reporting. DOC has partially implemented a national monitoring and reporting system, whereby priority indicators and measures are routinely used to report on progress against the objectives and outcomes. This factsheet reports on a measure for the 2017/2018 year.

Glossary of terms

DOC Ecosystem Management Units (EMUs) are places that have been identified as being important for management as best examples of the full range of NZs terrestrial, wetland and lake ecosystems. They may be on land/water of any tenure (not only PCL) and often include several connected ecosystems and communities of threatened species.

Long-term species persistence is where there is a 95% probability of a species surviving for the next 50 years or three generations (whichever is longer), given that all human-induced threats likely to occur over the longer-term (e.g. within 300 years) are adequately mitigated. Long-term persistence of populations includes all the components of securing a species from extinction, as well as buffering populations against the impacts of loss of genetic diversity, and longer term environmental events such as climate change. Persistence of species depends on population viability.

Population viability requires that:

there is an intrinsic ability to increase given suitable management because the population is large or because recruitment exceeds mortality, and
there is resilience against low and moderate level stochastic events over a 50 year time frame given suitable management. The minimum acceptable level of population viability is the point at which the species has been secured from extinction (i.e., is no longer in decline), key threats are understood and are managed, and the population is able to recover given additional management

References

Lee, W., McGlone, M., Wright, E., 2005. Biodiversity inventory and monitoring: A review of national and international systems and a proposed framework for future biodiversity monitoring by the Department of Conservation. Landcare Research Contract Report LC0405/122 (unpublished) for the Department of Conservation, Wellington.

McGlone, M., Dalley, J., 2015. A framework for Department of Conservation inventory and monitoring: Intermediate outcomes 1-5. Landcare Research Contract Report LC2427 (unpublished) for the Department of Conservation, Wellington.

Townsend, A., De Lange, P., Duffy, C., Miskelly, C., Molloy, J., Norton, D., 2008. New zealand threat classification system manual. Wellington, Department of Conservation 30.

Indigenous species under management 2018

Number of managed indigenous species by taxa group and threat classification