Biodiversity and Conservation Funding — Green Party's Sovereign Biodiversity Fund and Predator Free 2050 Commitment

The Policy: Green Party Biodiversity and Environmental Regeneration Policy →

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand proposes establishing a dedicated Sovereign Biodiversity Fund to resource regenerative conservation efforts across the country, and commits to significantly increasing funding for the Predator Free 2050 initiative. The party frames New Zealand's biodiversity crisis as an urgent emergency: more than 4,000 native plants and animals are threatened or at risk, and over 50 bird species have been lost since human arrival. The Greens argue that state investment — not market mechanisms — is the primary tool needed to reverse this trajectory.

The current National-led coalition government takes a sharply different view, reducing the Department of Conservation (DOC) budget by approximately $300 million across two budget cycles and disestablishing Predator Free 2050 Ltd in Budget 2025. The government argues that consolidating functions within DOC reduces duplication and increases efficiency, while saving approximately $12 million annually.

What it does:

• Establishes a Sovereign Biodiversity Fund (exact dollar amount unspecified in policy documents) to underwrite conservation and ecosystem regeneration across public and private land
• Commits to significantly increasing resourcing for bodies that eradicate and control invasive species, with Predator Free 2050 identified as a priority
• Doubles the extent of natural wetlands by 2050
• Ringfences all proceeds from the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVL) for conservation and biodiversity projects
• Expands legal protections to cover indigenous fish, plants, invertebrates, and fungi — species currently without statutory safeguards
• Reviews and continues Jobs for Nature (Mahi mō te Taiao), the community- and iwi-led conservation employment programme

Where things stand:

In opposition since the October 2023 election, the Green Party has been a consistent critic of what it describes as the coalition government's "war on nature." Green Conservation spokesperson Marama Davidson called the government's February 2025 announcement of $30 million over three years for biodiversity and tourism "an embarrassment" and "a mere drop in the bucket," noting DOC's own officials had warned of a $25 million annual shortfall just to maintain existing assets. The previous Labour-Green government had overseen what the Greens described as "the largest funding injection for conservation in over a decade," including $76 million for DOC in 2019 and $81 million for predator suppression and biodiversity protection.

The single most contested cut came in Budget 2025, when the government announced the disestablishment of Predator Free 2050 Ltd — the Crown-owned company established in 2016 by Sir John Key to drive large-scale pest eradication and fund breakthrough science. The company had grown to cover more than 800,000 hectares and support 15–20 active scientific research projects. Its responsibilities and remaining contracts were transferred to DOC, with funding ending by the close of 2025. Conservation groups including WWF New Zealand described the move as a blow to momentum and innovation.

In June 2025, Green agriculture spokesperson Steve Abel criticised the government's newly announced voluntary biodiversity credit scheme as "a bandaid on a gaping wound," citing the compounding effect of cuts to the Predator Free programme, natural area identification, Jobs for Nature, freshwater protections, and wetland rules. The Greens argue market-based credits are ineffective without regulatory mandates, and that direct public investment in landowner support and DOC resourcing remains the only viable path to halting species loss.

What to watch:

• Whether the transfer of Predator Free 2050 Ltd functions to DOC results in reduced operational capacity for community trapping groups and research contracts currently reliant on the company's strategic support
• The government's biodiversity credit scheme rollout and whether voluntary uptake is sufficient to offset the loss of direct public funding for threatened-species work
• Any pre-election Budget commitments from the Green Party that put a specific dollar figure on the Sovereign Biodiversity Fund — the current policy is intentionally uncosted in publicly available documents
• Progress on the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity and whether it is strengthened, weakened, or left unchanged by the current government