Naturvård på Nya Zeeland : Hur bedrivs naturvård på Nya Zeeland och vilken roll har volontärer i detta?

Sammanfattning: New Zealand is a country that has been isolated from the large continents for over 80 million years. This has resulted in a biodiversity completely different from the rest of the world with flightless birds and a huge number of endemic species. The country has earlier failed in keeping the species and ecosystems in their natural state. The Maori people and the Europeans with their companion animals caused dramatic ecosystem loss and fragmentation and a serious decline in biodiversity. Today the need for conservation is vast but on the positive hand; many individuals and organizations care for the environment and are doing a great work to preserve what is left of New Zealand. This report looks into how conservation organizations deal with the environmental issues and how conservation work is done. Volunteers take a big part in the conservation work and this report also aims to evaluate positive and negative sides of using volunteers. As a base for the study a field trip to New Zealand was made with Conservation volunteers NZ. This was an opportunity for the project member to experience conservation work in New Zealand for real.