WELLINGTON, March 2 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand's Department of Conservation will invest an extra 76 million NZ dollars (51.7 million U.S. dollars) over the next four years to address the country's biodiversity crisis.
"More than 4,000 of our native plants and wildlife are threatened or at risk of extinction," Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage said in a statement.
"In the 750 years since humans arrived in New Zealand, more than 50 native bird species have gone extinct, three frogs, at least three lizards, one freshwater fish, four plants and an unknown number of invertebrate species," Sage said.
The main threats to native species and their habitats on land are introduced predators such as possums, rats and stoats, habitat destruction such as wetland drainage, water pollution and changed river and stream flow regimes, diseases such as myrtle rust and the impacts of climate change, she said.
In the oceans, fisheries bycatch and over-fishing affect seabirds and marine mammals, the minister added.
Where there has been focused management and investment in recovery programs, the threat status of 22 bird species has improved, she said.
The new funding will see better protection of priority ecosystems, with work on 70 percent of the top 850 sites, up from 17 percent of sites, and an increase in the number of fully managed marine reserves, up from 25 percent to 41 percent of marine reserves which will include improved monitoring and enforcement.
