The booklets and infosheets below provide information and advice to help you make choices about managing our natural resources.

All these booklets are available in hardcopy, free of charge, from our customer services team.

• The natural succession option (pdf 76 kB)
• Using natives in Canterbury (pdf 155 kB)

Biodiversity (short for biological diversity) = variety of all biological life:  plants, animals, insects, fungi and microorganisms, the genes they contain and the ecosystems they collectively form; diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.

Native bush

If you have native bush on your farm, there are a few things you should consider:

Fencing to remove stock access:

• Farmers wanting to protect areas of bush are usually eligible for financial support and guidance.  The Environment Enhancement Fund can provide grants to help with the cost of fencing materials.
• Fencing to protect bush will stop stock damage and also improve farm management by taking out areas that are generally difficult to muster.
• Protecting native bush can help preserve streams and protect water quality, meaning cleaner stock water in hill and high country, and healthier stock.
• Establishing a covenant on an area of bush is a good way to ensure its future management after you have finished farming.
• Fenced-off areas still provide shelter for stock.
• If you fence bush, you may need to control weeds such as blackberry and broom, especially in the years it takes the native understorey to regenerate.
• There may be carbon payments attached to fencing off bush.  Native species have lower carbon sequestration rates than exotics such as Eucalypts and Douglas fir, but receiving payment for protecting native bush is still a bonus.
• Protecting bush can give you a marketing advantage if you sell your farm products under your own brand.

The effect of light grazing pressure (left) compared to the results of fencing stock out of bush (right).  Fencing out allows for bush regeneration and increased biodiversity on your property.

Scrub

Native scrub such as Manuka, Kanuka and Matagouri can be a hindrance on some farms, but these plants are often the only native vegetation in an otherwise grazed landscape and therefore can be an important component of biodiversity.  If protected, areas of scrub may revert to more substantial native bush.

Fencing-off areas of scrub may help with stock and grazing management, and will provide a distinctive boundary between scrub and productive farmland.

Scrub often grows in marginal land which, if cleared, will be prone to soil erosion, susceptible to weed and native regeneration, and potentially difficult to manage.

There may be opportunities for carbon credits associated with scrub.  This might be worth considering as an alternative to spending substantial money removing scrub.

If you have areas of native scrub on your farm, it would be worth considering various options for their future management.