Emeritus Prof David Norton said a big gap in incentivising farmers had to be narrowed if native biodiversity was to thrive on farms.
"There’s an old saying you can’t be green if you are in the red and that’s definitely true so we have to find win-win outcomes."
He said the biggest challenge was biodiversity farming came at a cost and farmers had to have a profitable farming system so there needed to be a way to make it pay.
"You can’t spend all of your money looking after biodiversity because you won’t survive and you will be out of farming very quickly. At the moment we have a big, big gap in New Zealand to incentivise farmers to help support you with biodiversity work."
Carbon credits through the ETS or voluntary market were an opportunity, but the problem with the ETS path was it strongly favoured pine plantations and was "skewed against" native forest.
His biggest criticism of carbon farming was the lack of accounting for the liability of carbon farming of pines on future generations.
"Basically they’re a get-rich-quick scheme as far as I can see based on a climate emergency with no consideration of who is going to manage those carbon farms in the future and who is going to be responsible for their life over the years ... Who is going to be liable for the pests, the diseases, the fire risk and what happens when those pine trees collapse in 50, 60, 70 years’ time and who is going to be responsible for the lost carbon?"
A voluntary market by some companies was at a fledgling stage for carbon in native forest, while a biodiversity payment system was still evolving with no clear indication of how it would work.
Some councils were providing grants and QEII covenants provided some support, but there was not a lot of funding.
Another incentive could be via the Recloaking Papatūānuku project by Pure Advantage to re-plant and restore native forests and wetlands.
Prof Norton said the project was trying to integrate native biodiversity into farming systems and to build funding models.
He said the idea a gully or other part of the landscape could be fenced off and then farmers could walk away was a myth as native biodiversity required management. Farmers were in the best position to do the work because they were on the land, and the challenge was to get incentive systems in place to help them manage native biodiversity, he said.
New Zealand has about 1500 native species of vertebrate animals such as birds and fish, 2500 plants and many more fungi, insects, worms and nematodes.
Most of the remaining native forests and wetlands are on farms with pastoral farming making up about half of the land total.
Prof Norton said the 2.8 million hectares of native vegetation on sheep and beef farms was 25% of the total in New Zealand.
He said farmers should be thinking about native biodiversity because it was important for its own sake, added direct and indirect values to farm operations and was part of the regulatory system.
"As farmers you are custodians of some amazing examples of biodiversity."
Matagouri could provide shade and shelter for lambing and calving and other species provided aesthetic values, income streams from honey, timber and tourism and market access.
"I had one farmer tell me that his banker had said to him that if he had a biodiversity plan for his farm it would allow him — and I gather it’s become commonplace down here — to have a cheaper rate on his mortgage and potentially good for the resale value. And it’s also part of that social licence that adds a set value to a farm and having native birds around the farm is something a lot of farmers appreciate and it’s part of an intergeneration story of a farm so all those benefits are there."
Market access was a benefit as the European Union wanted to ban the importation of products linked to deforestation from countries such as Brazil.
"That sort of policy change overseas is flowing to a lot of people that buy our meat and fibre products. We are seeing the likes of Tesco and others around the world wanting to more about the backstory of our products, whether its carbon, biodiversity, water or animal welfare."
He said this could be seen with Fonterra revealing its customer Nestle was asking for more information in its environmental requirements for milk.
High country farmers had to meet environmental standards for merino wool and Silver Fern Farms was selling carbon neutral meat into North America, he said.
"We are going to see more and more of this coming through and it’s a really important driver when you are thinking about native biodiversity."
While farmers were yet to receive a premium for supplying stock on a farm with a high level of native biodiversity, they were getting market access, which was a premium in its own right, he said.
Prof Norton said regulatory pressures were an incentive with national policy statements setting minimum standards which district and regional councils had to build in their plans and farmers had to follow.
"So the coalition government has indicated there will be some changes to SNAs [Significant Natural Areas] as to the criteria that is used to identify SNAs and I personally believe those changes are needed because I think the way the criteria has been written is too broad and for some farmers everything is identified as significant. There will always need to be SNAs and they’re really important, but we need to be able to distinguish between those areas that are genuinely significant and those areas that have just been picked up."
He was the guest speaker at the Beef + Lamb NZ (B+LNZ) Central Canterbury Farming for Profit field day held with the Mid Canterbury Catchment Collective at Okawa farm which was attended by about 60 farmers and industry people.
The retired botanist and ecologist at the University of Canterbury, now based at Lake Hāwea, has focused his interest the past 20 years on native biodiversity mainly on sheep and beef farms.
He continues to do a lot of one-on-one work with high country farmers including at Erewhon and Lake Heron stations, carries out talks to catchment groups and helped write up B+LNZ’s biodiversity module for farm planning.
Prof Norton said there had been a substantial loss of native biodiversity from early fires, felling of forest, settlement and a long history of invasive species. Invasive species continued to be a main driver of losses today and into the future the role of increasingly severe droughts and storms from climate change would have to be recognised.
An example of an invasive species moving south from warming was the banana passion vine which had become problematic on Banks Peninsula and was setting up on Otago Peninsula, he said.
He said farmers were more likely to see biodiversity projects through to fruition if they had a plan.
The main steps were knowing the biodiversity on a farm, setting goals, recognising opportunities and constraints and then developing a five-year operational plan and monitoring the outcomes towards a review.
Action plans could be based on an opportunity such as strategic planting next to a patch of bush with good bird populations and risks could include being next door to plantation forest or public conservation land with no control of deer, goats or wildings, he said.
It was better to look after original remnants first before starting new plantings, he said.
Prof Norton said catchment groups were a great way to share the cost of bringing in an ecologist to scope biodiversity over several farms.
The Retrolens online site of early aerial photos was a good way for farmers to see what their farm was like in the past, he said.
