Ecological health and integrity in New Zealand legislation

ABSTRACT New Zealand is introducing new legislation aimed at improving both developmental and environmental outcomes. Objectives include protecting and where required restoring ecological integrity, using environmental limits and targets, as well as improving long-term planning processes. This will contribute to protecting and enhancing biodiversity values, and offers greater opportunities to identify and potentially achieve long-term environmental goals. However, reliance on the mitigation hierarchy and a lack of clarity over what ecological integrity means in practice is likely to result in continuing net decline in natural environment values. The proposed legislation could be improved by distinguishing between ecological health and integrity as part of bioregional and ecoregional planning, and requiring net gains in health and integrity to be primary legislative outcomes.