Just how the Department of Conservation's new ''partnership'' approach to conservation, launched in September, is going to work is one of questions he hopes will be answered during the penguin trust-organised Conservation Inc conference in Dunedin, which starts today.
Mr Kennedy, who has worked for Doc and its predecessor for 35 years, said New Zealand was moving from a largely government co-ordinated approach to conservation to one with a ''strong disposition'' to a lack of co-ordination.
''I think we do need to make sure community-based conservation is doing the right thing by New Zealand biodiversity and that it is able to sustain the effort long enough. You can't stop and start, especially if they are close to extinction.''
He believed community groups and trusts could be relied upon to ''do the business''.
''But there will need to be a lot of negotiation between players and there's going to be a lot more players.''
While conservation trusts could be successful and durable - the yellow-eyed trust had been around for 25 years - they did have weaknesses in the way they functioned and operated.
''They don't have the same certainty of funding.
They have to engage in forms of behaviour that are foreign to conservation - strutting your stuff for self-promotion.''
There was also the risk of overlap and duplication.
The new model also led to the risk of competition between those non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for funding that was ''not all that easy to come by'', he said.
This gave trusts which championed ''beautiful species'' an advantage but could also make trusts more self-centred and a lot more invested in reputation and profile.
Community organisations were often ''drowning in an agony of finding funds'' and were therefore limited by what they could do.
''As far as I'm aware, New Zealand trusts are doing very well but the funding catchment is very small ... there is only so much money.''
As a result, funds previously devoted to protecting species were diverted, Mr Kennedy said.
''It's a fact of life. You've got to be out there,'' he said.
Competition could be ''really dangerous'' as conservation was a ''vocation'' for all involved and was, by nature, collegial.
''The scale of the task is so great, it will take people working together to fix it.''
It was hoped the role Doc would take in this and how community groups could harness the opportunities would be explained during the conference, which was being attended by Doc director-general Lou Sanson and other Doc staff, he said.
''Who is going to be the mentors, arbiters, police and safety net?''Despite all the challenges he believed the next 10 years would be very exciting for conservation and could lead to greater investment in conservation by the public.
''It's going to be hard work and it will be asking a lot of people's spare time.''
Nearly 200 people had registered for the conference, at the Dunedin Centre, which ends tomorrow.
