Public Speech At Lincoln University

Public speech by DOC Director-General Penny Nelson at Lincoln University on Thursday 25 June 2026.

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.

I’m delighted to be back here at Lincoln; you have a special place in my heart.

The last time I was here – back in November – I was part of a panel talking about what environmental management would look like in the next five years. Back then, I talked about how the environment had gone backwards in the 30 years since I did my Master’s in Resource Management.

I was advocating for a radical re-think of how we approach the way we manage the environment, and to make sure nature counts in decision making. Since then, I’ve doubled down on that view.

In the past five years as Director-General of Conservation, I’ve seen pressures on nature and the assets we manage become more relentless, more intertwined and more costly.

The Department of Conservation turns 40 years old next year – and I commissioned a piece of work to understand what the next 40 years will look like, and what’s needed to make a difference.

Over that time, DOC has done a lot of things right – we’ve intensively managed taonga species back from the brink and we’re a world leader in island eradications.

Take Campbell Island – two decades ago we boldly eradicated rats on an island six times bigger than any island attempted before – not only that but it was 700 kilometres south of the South Island, in wild, wet and windy conditions – a logistical nightmare.

But we did it, thanks to our can-do spirit, pioneering techniques and grunty determination. Where we focus our efforts, we get results.

Campbell Island today is stunning with fields of giant lilac megaherbs. The fields are dotted white and brown, with nests of southern royal albatross – and lounging sea lions.

But grunt will only get you so far. Our analysis shows the challenges facing conservation are growing faster than we can respond.

Nature is under increasing pressure from introduced predators – rats, stoats and feral cats – and invasive weeds like wilding pines, broom and gorse. We’re seeing more biosecurity threats – caulerpa is choking our sea floor and golden clams are clogging our riverbeds.

Wild animals – deer goats, tahr and chamois – are present at 80% of our monitored sites on public conservation land, up from 63% just a decade ago.

Climate change is compounding these pressures, and the cost of responding is rising faster than the resources available to meet them. We cannot rely on doing more of the same – we must make some hard choices.

Some sobering facts

Here are some sobering facts for you.

DOC manages one third of New Zealand’s land on a budget that’s about half of Christchurch City Council’s budget.

Our modelling shows DOC’s current biodiversity budget of around $360 million is not enough to hold the line on species and ecosystem protection.

My team says an extra $207 million a year is needed to prevent extinctions across the 900 threatened species and ecosystems that need urgent intervention.

Last year our modelling showed we needed an extra 150 million to hold the line – so the gap is widening.

And if we want to move from managing decline to enabling recovery, our modelling shows we need an extra 500-million a year.

That investment would target pests, weeds and biosecurity pressures and improve 5,600 key species and critical ecosystems.

This is modelling using DOC’s new BioInvest system and there are caveats on the data. But it shows the scale of the challenge we’re facing and why we need to look more broadly to draw in new sources of revenue and get sustainable levels of investment into conservation.

We’ve doubled the amount of money we spend recovering from storms.
Over the past five years we have spent about $10 million dollars a year on major storm events – Cyclone Gabrielle, Cyclone Dovi and heavy flooding in the Southern South Island.
In any given year we also get one or two lesser events that cost about $3 million each time to recover from.

What were highly damaging but, thankfully rare, storms are happening far more frequently. In most cases we have to absorb those costs and defer other work to create space to fix the damage.

In terms of other climate change impacts

Last year DOC published an assessment of over a thousand terrestrial species¹ including birds, bats, lizards, invertebrates, and vascular plants – against climate change impacts.

Our research found that about a third of the species will be highly vulnerable to climate change by mid-century, rising to almost two thirds by 2090.

Then if you look at the marine environment – New Zealand is a global hotspot for biodiversity because of its remoteness and size.

At least a third of our biodiversity is found at sea. But 87% of marine species could be highly vulnerable to climate change.

From an economic perspective – in 2017, the total value of the marine economy was estimated at $7 billion and it employed more than 30,000 people²

We need to do more to protect our oceans and coastlines.

Nature is not free

One of the biggest problems we’ve got as a country is that collectively, we act as though nature is free. It’s treated as a free backdrop to economic activity and recreation, rather than as critical infrastructure that underpins prosperity, resilience and wellbeing.

For decades we have relied on nature to absorb pressure, support livelihoods and provide resilience. The reality is that in terms of natural capital, we’re living well beyond our means and are racking up debts for future generations to pay.

We risk running down our natural capital and calling it growth. New Zealanders like to think of ourselves as people who love nature. We call ourselves kiwis, we market ourselves to international tourists as clean and green and 100% pure.

So many of our main agricultural producers use images of conservation land – our national parks, rivers, and coastlines – to sell their products. But affection is not the same thing as valuing something properly.

We’ve crunched the numbers and more than 80% of New Zealanders — and over half of international visitors — visit protected natural areas each year. Conservation tourism contributes around $5.4 billion annually³ and demand remains high.

Nature gives us clean air, fresh water, good quality soils. Public conservation land provides these ecosystem services to the tune of about $11 billion per year.⁴

Despite all this, nature does not feature prominently in national priorities and investment decisions. We are better at praising nature than valuing it, planning for it, or protecting it. We must factor nature into decisions that shape growth, investment and land use.

Our insurance industry for example understands a simple truth: if risk is real, it has to be priced, planned for, and reduced — not just cleaned up afterwards. Resilience is cheaper than repeated recovery.

How do we begin to get the shift we need?

To move to a future state where nature is recovering, heritage is protected, and effort is sustained we need to do three things.

First, we must protect the expertise and core capability within DOC, the Government’s lead on conservation,
We must grow conservation well beyond DOC,
And we need to change the wider system that shapes the extent to which nature can thrive in Aotearoa.

There will always be a need for what DOC does well – the Crown will always have responsibilities that cannot be handed away, for example, the role of protecting and advocating for public conservation land for future generations.

Our role also includes public safety, regulatory functions, and specialist expertise.

We must protect and strengthen field expertise, science, heritage knowledge and the ability to make difficult decisions under pressure. I’m talking about things like bird banding, skills to translocate birds, how to repair a heritage brick wall, how to assess tree felling, and to build swing bridges.

Those capabilities are hard to rebuild if we lose them — so they matter.

Lincoln also has a role to play here – you help us grow the next generation of land managers and spark the passion for conservation. And I’m really proud of the MOU we’ve just signed. This will foster collaboration between Lincoln and DOC over the use of data and digital tools, plus we’re aiming to strengthen pathways between study, applied research and future employment in the conservation system.

This will go a long way towards valuing a career in conservation management and helping us retain the skills and boost the capability we need heading into the future.

The second shift we need is growing ownership of conservation. I believe DOC matters – but DOC is not enough. Conservation already depends on iwi, communities, landowners, councils, businesses, and others.

At the centre of that is the critical role of Māori — as tangata whenua, as kaitiaki, and as long-standing partners in conservation. Many of our most significant conservation gains are built on iwi-led and iwi-partnered approaches, grounded in deep place-based knowledge and intergenerational stewardship.

If conservation is to grow, it will do so with Māori — not alongside, but together.

The question now is whether this wider effort can grow in a way that is consistent, supported, and able to last. And ensuring that DOC is ready to be a powerful partner to those efforts.

We’re already seeing what this looks like at scale. In the Raukūmara and through initiatives like Kotahitanga mot e Taiao, iwi and partners are leading coordinated, landscape-scale conservation. These efforts bring multiple groups together around shared outcomes — and they are delivering real results. This is the model for growing conservation beyond DOC.

Building on these examples means clearer roles, stronger partnerships, and better systems that make it easier for others to act with confidence.

Third — and most importantly over time — we need to change the wider system that shapes the extent to which nature can thrive in Aotearoa

Many of the pressures on nature are coming from decisions made outside of the conservation system. They come from decisions about land use, infrastructure, investment, and development.

We already know a great deal about what drives nature decline, what happens when action is delayed, and which approaches and resources make a difference. But we are yet to gain traction on the changes needed to ensure this is reflected in decisions.

If those decisions don’t account for the values of nature upfront, we’ll keep mopping up after the fact, once damage has already occurred.

One of the main battles for nature is before any conservation dollars are spent – in the choices that shape land use, investment and infrastructure. Part of the answer here will be new financial tools to expand how we pay for the cost of protecting and restoring nature.

I’m talking about mechanisms like bonds, co-investment models, natural infrastructure funding, carbon markets and biodiversity credits.

To realise these opportunities, we need robust and visible accounting of everything that nature does for us, as well as the opportunities and risks that creates. And we need the reporting, audit and monitoring that goes with that.

This isn’t about commodifying nature, it’s about giving it a voice in the language that decisions are made in.

It is now urgent to gain traction on these system changes so that nature’s value is reflected in decision-making and investment. This requires a whole-of-New Zealand shift — across government, iwi/Māori, the private sector and communities. DOC can and is supporting and helping to shape this, but we can’t deliver it on our own.

DOC has invested in comprehensive analysis of the ecosystem services provided by conservation land, is advising on the design of a voluntary nature credits system, contributing to development of nature-related financial disclosures and a national Natural Infrastructure Plan, and exploring instruments such as green bonds.

Canada is leading the way. Their Nature Strategy is so inspirational – they’re expanding the amount of protection across land, sea and freshwater systems – connecting habitats so species can move more safely. They’re focused on building Canada well and designing infrastructure that works with nature instead of against it. And they’re using finance tools to create capital to fund conservation in a sustainable long-term way.

Other leading jurisdictions are moving in similar directions: Costa Rica, a much less wealthy country than our own, is one of the clearest examples of a country that deliberately stopped treating nature as valueless.

Through its national Payment for Environmental Services programme, landowners are paid for carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, water regulation and scenic protection, shifting nature from an unpriced constraint to a recognised asset.

I believe that future prosperity will favour countries that learn to value nature properly.

Lincoln’s programmes strongly emphasise sustainability, ecological systems, restoration, and human–environment interactions.

Your Natural Resource Management and environmental degrees are exactly the disciplinary base used for nature-based solutions work (e.g. catchment restoration, ecosystem-based adaptation, biodiversity finance, etc.).

This thinking is needed more than ever the shift the system to meet current and future challenges.

Conclusion

We have got to stop taking nature for granted. What we don’t value, we will keep losing.

Across Aotearoa New Zealand, people already care about nature.

They already act for it, in many different ways.

The task now is to build a system that can hold and grow that effort, and make a difference at a national level.

To protect what matters most, support others to lead, and to make sure nature is considered early — in the decisions that shape our future.

The challenge ahead is not choosing between these shifts, but balancing our effort across all three.

Together, they are what will build a more resilient conservation system, capable of meeting the pressures we face now and those still to come.

That is what it will take for nature to thrive.

Ngā mihi.

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