Wagner Nicky: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWagner Nicky: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10524. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NICKY WAGNER (Associate Minister of Conservation): It is an enormous privilege to live in a country like New Zealand which has such a magnificent natural environment and all Kiwis have special places that they enjoy. We have magnificent birds trees rivers and lakes and we are privileged I think to have such easy access to these magnificent places.A third of New Zealand is in public ownership known as the conservation estate and I think I would like to spend a few moments just to reflect on the good work that the Department of Conservation (DOC) is doing in looking after that conservation estate. Those national parks our regional parks our reserves our lakesides and our riverbeds are something the world is enormously envious of and thousands of local New Zealanders tourists and travellers come here to explore and enjoy them.I think DOC has been doing particularly interesting work in terms of our native birds. It says that if you want to be a conservationist in New Zealand you need to be a killer and you need to be a very keen killer because our predators—rats mice stoats possums and feral cats; all those imported animals that have come to New Zealand—prey on our special birds and unless we kill them we are going to lose the birds themselves. I think the key issue here is that our birds are particularly vulnerable to these pests because they evolved without these animals in our country.Fortunately Kiwis as New Zealanders love our birds and we have got thousands of New Zealanders who go out and help in that conservation work and we have got businesses and organisations that are keen to be part of that conservation. Organisations such as Kiwis for Kiwi have done magnificent work in terms of turning up the number of kiwis being born and looking after them once they have been born. In the wild 90 percent of kiwi chicks are killed by predators but if we look after them properly up to 80 percent of them can fledge and have an opportunity to live in the wild again.We have just had the most successful breeding season for kākāpō. Kākāpō are now breeding this year in three different sanctuaries around New Zealand and we are thinking that we may have up to 40 new chicks which makes an enormous difference to this small population. On top of that the whio—the blue duck—has doubled in numbers since 2011. We now have more than 600 birds and we believe that they are back from the brink of extinction. I think we can celebrate the fact that ordinary New Zealanders have the opportunity to see such unique birds as takahē kāka kea mohua rock wrens tūī kererū—you name them—and many many many more. New Zealand is so fortunate with the birds that it has.We are also a Mecca for seabirds and migratory birds. I have just spent some time at Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre where DOC was signing a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Government to protect the godwits and the red knots which have come all the way from Siberia and the Arctic Circle. They fly via China all the way to the Coromandel Peninsula and it is wonderful that the Chinese Government is prepared to work with New Zealanders to protect their environment on the way and their habitat so that they actually can complete that journey.While I was there I had the particularly fortunate experience of seeing over 2000 wrybill birds. A wrybill is a bird that is unique to the Canterbury area for breeding—it breeds on our braided rivers—and if you are fortunate and you go out there with a birdwatcher you might see one or two on the braided rivers. They breed there but then they go to the Coromandel during the summer and they go in large flocks. I saw over 2000 of those wrybills. The wrybill is unique because it is the only bird in the world that has a beak that turns or bends—that is it is wry at the end—and it uses it to look for grubs and things under the stones in the braided rivers.I would just like to make the point that DOC is doing a very good job in partnership with numerous people to protect these special species to make New Zealand the country that it is and to reflect on our natural environment. Kia ora.