James Russell: Auckland University conservation biologist on the $85,000 dollar mission to rescue three skinks

Questions have been raised over a three-week mission to locate and re-home three native skinks, at a cost of $85,000.

It involved clearing vegetation along State Highway Three near New Plymouth - and releasing one copper skink and two gold striped geckos at Everett Park Scenic Reserve.

Auckland University conservation biologist James Russell says the money spent was a fraction of the total costs of work on the highway.

He explained New Zealand is extremely bio-diverse - and gold-striped geckos are incredibly rare. 

"It's just another species where we don't know what's happening - and if we don't look, it'll just disappear and be another blot on our record."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fry and Bridge.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
It has just gone eighteen minutes after five news talks
AB we will get to after six of the health
and safety as the workplace safety stuff and the fact
that farmers in particular we're worried about having events held
on their land. Will that change after what Brook van
Velden has told us. We'll find out right now. A
project of rehome and catching native skinks has cost taxpayers

(00:25):
eighty five thousand dollars. A wildlife permit was granted by
doc a head of road improvements on State Highway three
in New Plymouth. The program, though, only found three skinks
across three weeks of tracking. Professor James Russell is a
conservation biologist at Auckland University with us this evening. Hi, James,
good afternoon. Right, So there's one copper skink and two

(00:46):
gold striped geckos. Are they a big deal?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
The copper skins found across New Zealand, But those gold
strike geckos are really special. They're only found around lowland Taranaki,
and as we know, a lot of Taranaki's lowland has
been cleared. So finding some of these species is really
good so we can protect them and learn more about them.
And what's really important to remember is that New Zealand
is actually a reptile hotspot and there's more endemic species

(01:11):
of skinks and geckos in New Zealand. Then there are
birds even, but we just know so little about them
or where they are.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
So if we don't know that much about them or
where they are, then do we need to bother finding
them and rehoming them if we want to do and
you know, we're just widening a road here.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Exactly, and I mean this, This road widening project cost
over eleven million dollars, so the actual budget for trying
to protect threatened species and relocate them less than one
percent of the total budget. But we don't want to
take a Fredad of the Frog approach here. We want
to make sure we go out there and look because
if we don't look for these rare species, we don't
see them before we see as some roadside, then we're
just going to develop everywhere in the country. But until

(01:49):
we just put a tiny amount of our budgets aside
to look for these rare species, we can do better
conservation for them.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, but by the time we've dealt with the ecology
that there are so many other things that need dealing
with the one percent plus one percent plus one percent,
Suddenly your motorways doubled in price. Well, can I answer
this question about the skinks? So if they hit so
they widened the road, right, could the skinks not have
just shuffled over?

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, that's exactly what we're hoping that most of the
skinks will shuffle over and move themselves off to the side.
But sometimes when we look on these projects, we can
find over sixty such as around the Wellington Railway project,
whereas here we just found three skinks, and so it's
really good that we can find some of the ones
that don't shuffle away to make sure we're doing everything
we can for these species.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
What would actually have cost eighty five thousand dollars So
apparently there were three ecologists involved. Why was it so
expensive for a three week project.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's the same thing that's so expensive whenever we do
roadworks or any kind of project. It's paying for people's
staffs and time and for expertise. You need to have
a certain level of expertise in training to be able
to do this, just as you need to to get
the construction managers going into pay for all the roadworks.
So that's why at the end of the day, it's
just more than one percent of the project. So I
think it's a good investment.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Do you know, you, James, you're going to be really
getting up people's getting on people's nerves saying it's less
than one percent. I mean, I know it's less than
one percent, but one percent plus one percent plus one
percent plus one percent plus one percent for every gecko
and skink and bird, it starts to add up.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I think that's that it always adds up to one
percent because you're just adding percentages, you.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Know what I'm saying. It's James, how endangered is the
gold striped gecko? How many do we have left?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
We don't have a good estimate for how many they
are because people aren't investing in research on them. So
it's an unknown species, but it's classified as at risk
in decline as most of them are. There's over one
hundred and twenty three species of skink and gecko across
New Zealand. We're one of the richest biodiversity hot spots
in the world for them. So it's just another species
where we don't know what's happening and if we don't look,

(03:53):
it'll just disappear and be another plot on our record
for an extinct species.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
All right, appreciate you try. James. That is Professor James Russell,
conservation biologist at Auckland University, talking about State Highway three
and New Plymouth where you will have a wider road,
but it will be delayed by three weeks and you
will have one percent added to your budget.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, Listen live to
news talks.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio