Listeners to National Radio will be familiar with Nicola Toki’s weekly slot with Jesse Mulligan to talk about the critter of the week. Her knowledge of the critters is extensive, and her enthusiasm infectious. She began this as an employee of the Department of Conservation and single-handedly – aided a bit by the complicity of Jesse Mulligan – has elevated the status and understanding of many small, ugly, or non-descript examples of New Zealand native fauna. For the price of one well-chosen employee with passion for their role, the Department of Conservation achieved levels of awareness and comprehension that no amount of professionally produced publicity material by expensive external consultants could ever have managed. In the overall scheme of things, it turns out that was probably a bit inconvenient.
These days, Nicola Toki heads up New Zealand Forest and Bird. We won’t hold it against her that she took over from a dyed in the wool former Green MP (great metaphor don’t you think?) – but she is now perfectly placed to do what she did so well on National Radio recently – which is to call the Conservation Minister to account. Possibly a career limiting move were she still employed at DOC.
According to its website, the Department of Conservation exists to “run programmes to protect and restore our species, places, and heritage, and provide opportunities for people to engage with these treasures”. More fool it for letting its best ambassador desert “to the other side”. I imagine – notwithstanding Nicola’s staunch defence of it, that self-funded lobby groups such as Forest and Bird would be a thorn in the department’s side achieving as they do, quite a lot with quite a little. I have found with government departments that they take a dim view of external groups doing what they do – especially if those groups are doing it better.
I don’t imagine Nicola’s relationship with the Minister will be all that sturdy after publicly calling him to account as she has once more. Check out her superb open letter to the last Minister written in May 24.
The Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has said “it would cost hundreds-of-billions, maybe trillions, of dollars to save all native species in New Zealand from extinction and instead we should identify the highest value conservation areas to target”.
What Nicola Toki says is “The Minister has forgotten what his job is.” “He has an underwhelming ambition not to save them all” He seems to think “it’s all a bit hard and ‘spencie’” and makes the point: “people aren’t coming to New Zealand to look at shopping malls, are they?”
She then converts those seemingly harsh observations to this. “Our national identity is based on our natural environment.” “We need a leader with the will and the ambition and evidence base to make good decisions about investing”. Why wouldn’t you “invest strategically in an asset that delivers our return?” And then she drops the absolute clanger that “DOC is funded on less than the budget of the Christchurch City Council and that is a disgrace”.
Go Nicola Toki. You are a national treasure. Please take care that you too do not become an endangered species.
