Protecting New Zealand's iconic flora and fauna is integral to the future of farming and the Government is consulting on how it can protect New Zealand's native biosecurity.
Update 25 July 2022
The Government’s consultation on the exposure draft of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity has now closed. B+LNZ provided a joint submission with DINZ.
Read our submission here (PDF, 928 KB). The supporting documents (a review of the SNA criteria by Element Environmental and the 2020 submission by B+LNZ and DINZ) are also on the right of this page.
Find out more about the consultation on the Ministry for the Environment website.
B+LNZ continues to work on raising awareness of farmer concerns about the biodiversity legislation, in particular SNAs. We’ll keep farmers updated.
What we did during the July 2022 consultation
- We published guidance for farmers on how to make their own submission. Access it here (PDF, 187KB).
- We sought real-life examples of farmers integrating indigenous biodiversity into their farming systems, to further strengthen our submission. We developed a brief survey about this.
- We encouraged farmers to contact their local MP – you can still do this. Key points could include:
- The criteria for SNAs are still too broad.
- More time is needed to test the effects of this and to get the rules right before it creates issues.
- Our sector is hugely supportive of indigenous biodiversity but we don’t believe that the draft legislation will achieve its intended aims.
- The Government needs to slow down its ambitious environmental policy agenda and make sure that policies are not developed in silos but integrate effectively with each other.
2020 consultation on Indigenous Biodiversity
B+LNZ provided a submission to the Government in March 2020, and provided an online submission form and templates for farmers to make a submission. We also ran workshops, in collaboration with Federated Farmers.
The Government announced it would postpone a decision on the NPSIB until early 2021.
Since then, B+LNZ has advocated for this to be further delayed, given the amount of work that needs to be done on freshwater and climate change. More updates will be provided when available.