Cash knockback stings scientists

Scientists researching pest and weed control face an uncertain future after failing to get long-term funding in the first round of a new research bidding process.

Landcare Research, which employs 385 people, has lost its initial bid for a six- to 12-year pest-management package to finance work on wasps and other "invasive insects", stoats and other land mammals, and weeds.

It has a second chance to bid, but only on a two- to four-year "project" basis against stiff competition from HortResearch, three universities, two private firms and Standards NZ.

The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology has given Landcare about $9.5 million out of $13 million a year allocated so far for "natural ecosystems" research, including six-year to 12-year packages for research on saving endangered species and for the national collections of plants, insects, fungi and bacteria.

But foundation chief executive Murray Bain said Landcare's other big bid for pest-management research had to go into the second round for shorter-term funding because of a policy that six-year to 12-year packages should take no more than 80 per cent of the total financing available.

"I wouldn't like the world to get the impression that we are not going to fund in this area," he said. "We have signalled that this area is a priority."

Landcare's work in the area includes research on controlling European wasps that have arrived on cargo ships and aircraft mainly since the 1970s, and have largely displaced native birds such as the kaka, tui and bellbird in northern South Island beech forests for five months each year. In those months, a tiny insect sucks sap out of the beech trees and excretes honey dew on the bark.

Auckland University ecologist Dr Jacqueline Beggs said: "If you were designing something that was a paradise for wasps you would coat the trees in sugar. That happens to be what we have in New Zealand."

She said Landcare missed out on the long-term funding because the foundation had shifted money into a huge new $6 million -a-year package led by Crop & Food Research to detect and eradicate new pests before they leave the wharves or airports.

That project aims to develop high-tech remote sensing systems and other technologies to catch any future stowaway wasps, mosquitoes or other pests.

The foundation has earmarked a total of $32 million for the full natural ecosystems field, which was chosen as the guinea pig for a gradual shift to six-year to 12-year funding packages.

The new "outcome-based investment" packages require researchers to negotiate planned research outcomes with organisations that will use the research such as, in this case, the Conservation Department and regional councils.

But as well as holding back 20 per cent of the finance for land-based ecosystems research for shorter-term contracts, the foundation has also told all bidders for water-based ecosystems research to bid again by next April.

It has invited bidders to a workshop in Wellington on January 25 because the "outcomes" and "milestones" proposed in the initial bids "were of variable quality and did not always adequately represent the research offered".

"We want to make sure we have a consistency across all the areas we are investing in," Mr Bain said.

Landcare's chief operation officer for research, Ian Whitehouse, said pest research accounted for 26 to 30 per cent of the institute's total budget.

But half of its pest research income already comes directly from DoC and the Animal Health Board, so only the other half is vulnerable to the foundation's decisions.

He said Landcare was always going to be at risk in this year's funding round because it had 95 per cent of the ecosystems research financing in the foundation's last round in this field in 1998.