Federated Farmers Calls For Doubling Of QEII Trust Funding

Federated Farmers is calling on the Government to double its funding for the QEII National Trust to ensure it can continue to meet demand from farmers.

"The QEII Trust has a stellar track record of working with landowners to permanently protect special areas of bush, wetland and biodiversity," Federated Farmers vice president Colin Hurst says.

"It’s an utter disgrace that QEII’s base government funding has remained unchanged at $4.3 million for a decade, despite rising demand for its help.

"In real terms, that’s a huge cut in funding."

The QEII National Trust was established in 1977, with Federated Farmers dairy chair (the late) Gordon Stephenson a key instigator.

Its core function is to encourage protection of natural and cultural features on private land. The trust partners with landowners who voluntarily protect their land without selling or donating it.

Covenants ensure threatened species and special areas of bush and wetland are protected for future generations, in perpetuity. Subsequent landowners can’t alter this protection.

Covenants now cover 187,774 hectares - the vast majority on farms. That is an area of land over double the size of Tongariro National Park.

The QEII Trust celebrated its 4000 th covenant in 2014/15. Now, nearly 10 years later, it has 5,200 covenants to be managed and monitored - a 28% increase in demand, with no change in government base funding.

For comparison, the Department of Conservation’s funding went from $470m to $718m over that same 10-year period.

"With that big hike in the amount of covenanted land, there is clearly huge buy-in from farmers," Hurst says.

"Voluntary initiatives like the QEII Trust have huge support in rural communities and are a far better approach than heavy-handed and impractical SNA rules."

The trust leverages outside funding and bequests, and works with district and regional councils. In 2021 it also secured $8m of Jobs for Nature funding, spread over four years.

But that runs out in June this year and the trust is warning it will have to scale back the number of new covenants it can support.

A 2017 study by Waikato University’s Institute for Business Research found that covenanting landowners together spend an estimated $25 million of their own money every year to protect native species and special areas in their QEII covenants

Loss of potential income from other alternative uses of land under covenant was estimated to be between $443-$638 million between 1977 and 2017.

Farmers and other landowners pitch in with environmentalists, volunteers and council staff to carry out planting, pest control, fencing and other work on covenanted sites.

"It represents farmer commitment, and great bang for buck, on conservation.

"The Government needs to step up its contribution to keep up the pace," Hurst says.

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