DoC axe falls on bird aid projects

The man who led the programme to save New Zealand's native parrot, the kakapo, has been sidelined into a technical desk job in a drastic Conservation Department cost-cutting exercise that will axe 13 jobs.

The $2.1 million cuts involve disbanding the biodiversity recovery unit.

The department's last remaining fulltime seabird biologists and the manager of the bird banding programme, which bands 25,000 birds a year, will lose their jobs.

Kakapo recovery programme leader Paul Jansen has been assigned to writing standard operating procedures.

The scientist in the kakapo team has been shifted to a "site management" unit and the vet in the team has been moved into other work.

The department's science and research division, headed by Dr Geoff Hicks, will disappear on January 10, with remaining scientists reassigned to other divisions in a bid to link them more closely with operating groups.

Dr Hicks will take up a reduced role of "chief scientist". His immediate subordinates, research manager Paul Dingwall and science business manager Rob McColl, have been made redundant. The Wellington regional office will close.

Forest and Bird conservation manager Kevin Hackwell said the move to get rid of leading scientists and recovery programme experts was unacceptable.

"These are the people whose heroic efforts to save our endangered animals make New Zealand proud. We can't afford to lose these people and their skills."

But the department's general manager of business management, Grant Baker, said it had no option because its core funding had failed to keep up with inflation, despite budget increases for specific programmes such as the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy (NZBS).

"The NZBS is only a component of the natural heritage budget," he said.

"In 2003-04 the budget for management of natural heritage was $119.2 million. In 2004-05 it's $116.3 million.

"So while there may be an increase of $4.8 million in the NZBS, there are cuts happening elsewhere in our core funding."

Mr Hackwell said he understood the $2.1 million cut in science and research was only part of overall cuts of $6 million a year.

One of the two seabird scientists whose job has been axed, Dr Mike Imber, is a leading expert on albatrosses and petrels, with three books and more than 50 papers in scientific journals to his name.

He said one of the department's other seabird experts left last year, and now he and Nelson colleague Kath Walker will follow.

"Three years ago there were three or four of us on seabirds in DoC. As a result of this, DoC will not have a fully operational seabird biologist in research."

The manager of the national bird banding programme, Rod Cossee, said his programme had been cut from three people to one and a half, and the job had been redefined and given to someone else.

"I ran it for 25 years under abominable circumstances because the banding scheme has always been the stepchild of the department.

"It has been cut down and cut down and cut down. I have kept it alive at the cost of my health. They have just changed the position description and that was not what I was doing so I was made surplus."

 

The curator of birds at Te Papa, Sandy Bartle, said he was part of a team that reviewed the bird banding scheme last year and recommended its staff should be increased to four.

"What they are getting is one part-time, untrained person and one fulltime or possibly not fulltime person," he said.

But one of the managers who has lost his job, Dr McColl, said the department's scientists would be more effective when they were reassigned to operational divisions.

"We've got a wonderful publication record. But the information we were producing was not necessarily being as well used as we would like," he said. "This restructuring will solve some of that communication issue."

Conservation Minister Chris Carter said he would seek extra funding in next year's Budget.

ENDANGERED EXPERTS

Sidelined

The leader of the kakapo recovery project.

Axed

One of the country's leading experts on albatrosses and petrels, seabird biologists and the head of the bird banding programme.