NZ cities to benefit from University project
university-of-waikato
Tue Oct 13 2009 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
NZ cities to benefit from University project
Tuesday, 13 October 2009, 12:26 pm
Press Release: University of Waikato
Media Release
October 13, 2009
NZ cities to benefit from Waikato University project
A major project at Waikato University which rebuilds native ecosystems in urban areas will now be spread to three New Zealand cities.
The university’s urban restoration project has had four years of funding from the government’s Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, and has just been granted another three years of funding at nearly $300,000 a year.
The initial funding saw Hamilton used as a template to discover the best way to restore natural ecosystems in city areas where development has depleted their biodiversity. This further funding will enable Waikato University researchers to decide on two or three mid-sized New Zealand cities that will benefit from the work.
The university’s Professor Bruce Clarkson, who heads the project, says those cities should be selected by the end of the year. Work will begin early next year on scoping the cities and determining the size of the problem. “We’ll be having a close discussion with FRST about the cities that could benefit most from this,” Prof Clarkson says.
He says New Zealand’s broad goals for biodiversity can’t be achieved without the ecological restoration of the urban and semi-urban landscapes.
The emphasis thus far has been on restoration planting and pest control, backed up by scientific monitoring, to restore native vegetation and animal life. However, Prof Clarkson, who chairs Waikato’s Biological Sciences Department, says in some cities, preventing further degradation of the ecosystems – rather than rebuilding them – might be needed. “Are the trees regenerating properly? Are the birds producing enough chicks to survive? These are the questions we need to answer.
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“The method for Hamilton is now ready for use by similar cities. What we need to do now is choose cities with different problems where working on those will eventually deliver benefits to many other cities,” Prof Clarkson says.
Already Waikato University researchers have worked out the indigenous cover in the 20 largest urban areas. New Plymouth is top with 8.5% of indigenous cover in the city area – but it has issues around linking that cover to its nearby national park and mountain. Dunedin has just 1% indigenous cover and Palmerston North epitomises many New Zealand cities with virtually no indigenous cover.
The university, which is again partnering with Landcare Research, will run educational workshops for council staff on ecological approaches to their city. “It’s about integrating the skill sets of landscape architects, the horticulturalists, and the arborists and moving some of the focus from lawns and gardens to areas of bush,” says Prof Clarkson.
“It’s about how we bring council staff into the process and it’s often a question of whether they have the background or skills relating to the problem. A lot of councils still don’t have people who know about biodiversity.”
He says cities can actually offer a great chance to conserve native plants and animals – something not always possible in rural areas where predators are harder to control and it’s harder to get volunteer help. “This is our opportunity to restore threatened and iconic native plants and animals to urban environments.”
Prof Clarkson says the university has had strong support from Professor Rutherford Platt, who runs an Ecological Cities Project in the US and is at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prof Platt, regarded as an urban restoration guru, visited Waikato University this year for a Waikato University urban restoration workshop, and was quick to support Waikato’s application to FRST.
Prof Platt told FRST that the university’s programme managed to balance science and public policy in a way not seen in the US; the programme and Hamilton City Council worked extremely well together; and the project genuinely embraced an ecosystem perspective.
Prof Clarkson says the results achieved in four short years in the Hamilton area have so impressed US ecology proponents that he has been invited to speak at an urban restoration conference in the US in October.
ends
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