The Department of Conservation, Ngāi Tahu and community partners yesterday joined the Island-Ocean Connection Challenge (IOCC) in a bid to raise $137m to rewild Rakiura/Stewart Island, the Chatham Islands and the subantarctic Auckland Islands.
The projects are estimated to cost $202m in total but the government has already invested $54m in the islands and $11.5m has been donated.
The IOCC, led by international conservation groups Island Conservation and Re:wild, and the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, aims to restore at least 40 globally significant island-ocean ecosystems by 2030.
Doc director-general Penny Nelson said joining the IOCC would help the country to promote ground-breaking island conservation on the world stage.
"These islands are precious remnants of a prehistoric world. Protecting and restoring them will make sure they become safe havens for iconic native species once more.
"It will boost government investment so we can scale up the most complex and challenging island conservation projects New Zealand has ever attempted."
Predator Free Rakiura general manager Darius Fagan agreed the initiative would help to raise the profile of the work that had been done on those islands.
Mr Fagan said that the cost of making Stewart Island free of pests was estimated at $90m but potentially could be more.
"People focus a little bit on the immediate project, which is the predator eradication, but after that there is the island restoration, right? So relocating species, doing other things around the coast to help with erosion and those kind of things. So you need a sustainable source - even though you might commit in the short term, you need that to keep coming through."
Mr Fagan acknowledged it was not a small task, but said it was feasible to achieve it in the long term.
"For the eradication, it would be taking probably somewhere between five and seven years to know that we’ve eradicated the species that we’re targeting.
"But the plan this year is to do an operation that will add some protection for the southern dotterel while they’re nesting because our original plan was to start in the southern tip of the island, but the dotterel is so endangered that if you don’t do something now, you might not get another chance."
He said this operation would start around August and community support and awareness would be paramount to achieve the end goal.
Awarua Rūnaka spokesman and co-chairman of Te Puka Rakiura Trust Dean Whaanga said the success of restoring the nature on small offshore islands such as Ulva Island and the Tītī Islands laid the pathway for the work that needed to be done on Stewart Island and the other islands.
"It’s an effort now for us. So the short-term work that we put into it, we’re going to have long-term gains."
The project on the islands was part of the country’s goal of having New Zealand predator free by 2050.
