Conservation groups in the Western Bay of Plenty are banding together in an effort to conserve their efforts and make them more effective, Tauranga City Councillors were told this week.

'If we are protecting the dotterel or looking after the kiwi and then you go off and the rats and the possums come back and it all goes down the drain, we are actually wasting money now,” says Maketu Ongatoro Wetland Society chairman Julian Fitter.

'We might as well pack up now and spend our money on… going fishing or something. We must find a way of being sustainable and have longevity into the future.”

Julian and Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust chairman Hans Prendergast were addressing the Tauranga City Council Environment Committee during the public forum this week, announcing the establishment of the Bay of Plenty Conservation Alliance.

The alliance currently comprises four conservation groups: Uretara Estuary Managers, the Aongatete Forest Project, Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust and Maketu Ongatoro Wetland Society.

'We're looking to bring together the various small conservation groups in the bay to try and drive the whole conservation issue forward,” says Julian.

'There's lots of really good work going on but it's all quite disconnected, just small groups working in their own little back yards you might say, some of them slightly bigger. Otanewainuku has a slightly bigger patch working with quite a lot of volunteers and supporters.”

The conservation groups are unconnected, have no real voice and are dependent on a small number of often elderly volunteers.

'And there's the well-known thing of volunteer burnout, they do about five years and then collapse and go off and do something else,” says Julian. 'And I often think ‘What is the point of doing what we are doing if it is not still being done in 50 or 100 years' time?'”

Small groups have a huge number of issues about what they have to do to stay afloat, which means they are not achieving conservation goals when their energies are drained by administration and internal management.

The amount of time wasted at the Resource Management Act regional coastal planning hearing last year really shocked him, says Julian.

'I had to give up after a while. We didn't have money for a lawyer and I didn't have time.

'It's just staggering and that structure is no good for a small group. We simply can't collectively get involved in that and that's a shame because it is a lack of democracy.”

There are also funding issues. Small conservation groups have to more or less constantly apply for funding.

'If you are building a ship, would you design it with a hole in the bottom so that you always needed a pump to stay afloat, so why would you build an organization that always needs funding?

'We want to build an organization that becomes sustainable in due course. That's one of the key ingredients. We won't want to have to constantly come to councils or DOC or what have you to say we need some more money just to run the organization.

'There are tonnes of different applications, and I don't mind making an application if know I'm going to get the money. What I don't like doing is making an application and getting nothing. More time and effort when I could be out there killing the rats or getting rid of the pampas grass and that sort of thing.”

'We have got to find a better way forward. And that's where this has come from.

The biggest issue facing volunteer conservation groups is management capacity, says Julian.

'What you can do depends on how much management you have. It's not the number of volunteers you have, it's how much management.”

If the new organization can successfully take on the management loads of the four groups, they can make a big difference to expanding the projects and move toward large scale conservation.

'Because preserving a little tiny hill is actually not going to make much difference to anybody and us doing a little bit on maketu spit or

'If we would include the whole of the two harbours, if we can include the whole of the Papamoa Hills, if we can include whole catchments alongside the harbour, then we are really making a difference. We will become Bay of Plenty Conservation.”