ENVIRONMENT: $2.8m to get rid of island rats

One of our foremost wildlife sanctuaries, Little Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf, will be targeted in a multi-million-dollar rat eradication operation next year.

Overall conservation spending is up slightly, but funding for the Department of Conservation is cut from $179 million to $174 million - at a time when halting the decline in native plants and wildlife requires much more investment.

The Minister of Conservation, Nick Smith, attributed the cut to the end of a $30 million programme to improve department structures after the Cave Creek disaster.

Little Barrier, where even native tuatara are kept in secure enclosures to protect them from rats, is one of three islands to get $2.8 million over three years for eradication. The removal of the Polynesian rat, or kiore, from the island will be subject to consultation with the local iwi, Ngati Wai.

Other environmental funding includes $44 million over five years to map New Zealand's continental shelf for its Law of the Sea claim, which could give the country jurisdiction over an area of land and seabed that would be the 11th largest in the world.

More than $500,000 will go into regulations for dealing with used oil, and an extra $2.6 million will be spent cleaning up the country's worst toxic dump, the old Fruitgrowers Chemical Company site at Mapua, near Nelson. - Philip English