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Speaker 1: Fry and Bridge.

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Speaker 2: It has just gone eighteen minutes after five news talks

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Speaker 2: AB we will get to after six of the health

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Speaker 2: and safety as the workplace safety stuff and the fact

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Speaker 2: that farmers in particular we're worried about having events held

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Speaker 2: on their land. Will that change after what Brook van

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Speaker 2: Velden has told us. We'll find out right now. A

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Speaker 2: project of rehome and catching native skinks has cost taxpayers

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Speaker 2: eighty five thousand dollars. A wildlife permit was granted by

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Speaker 2: doc a head of road improvements on State Highway three

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Speaker 2: in New Plymouth. The program, though, only found three skinks

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Speaker 2: across three weeks of tracking. Professor James Russell is a

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Speaker 2: conservation biologist at Auckland University with us this evening. Hi, James,

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Speaker 2: good afternoon. Right, So there's one copper skink and two

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Speaker 2: gold striped geckos. Are they a big deal?

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Speaker 1: The copper skins found across New Zealand, But those gold

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Speaker 1: strike geckos are really special. They're only found around lowland Taranaki,

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Speaker 1: and as we know, a lot of Taranaki's lowland has

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Speaker 1: been cleared. So finding some of these species is really

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Speaker 1: good so we can protect them and learn more about them.

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Speaker 1: And what's really important to remember is that New Zealand

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Speaker 1: is actually a reptile hotspot and there's more endemic species

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Speaker 1: of skinks and geckos in New Zealand. Then there are

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Speaker 1: birds even, but we just know so little about them

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Speaker 1: or where they are.

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Speaker 2: So if we don't know that much about them or

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Speaker 2: where they are, then do we need to bother finding

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Speaker 2: them and rehoming them if we want to do and

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Speaker 2: you know, we're just widening a road here.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, and I mean this, This road widening project cost

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Speaker 1: over eleven million dollars, so the actual budget for trying

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Speaker 1: to protect threatened species and relocate them less than one

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Speaker 1: percent of the total budget. But we don't want to

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Speaker 1: take a Fredad of the Frog approach here. We want

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Speaker 1: to make sure we go out there and look because

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Speaker 1: if we don't look for these rare species, we don't

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Speaker 1: see them before we see as some roadside, then we're

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Speaker 1: just going to develop everywhere in the country. But until

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Speaker 1: we just put a tiny amount of our budgets aside

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Speaker 1: to look for these rare species, we can do better

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Speaker 1: conservation for them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but by the time we've dealt with the ecology

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Speaker 2: that there are so many other things that need dealing

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Speaker 2: with the one percent plus one percent plus one percent,

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Speaker 2: Suddenly your motorways doubled in price. Well, can I answer

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Speaker 2: this question about the skinks? So if they hit so

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Speaker 2: they widened the road, right, could the skinks not have

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Speaker 2: just shuffled over?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what we're hoping that most of the

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Speaker 1: skinks will shuffle over and move themselves off to the side.

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Speaker 1: But sometimes when we look on these projects, we can

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Speaker 1: find over sixty such as around the Wellington Railway project,

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Speaker 1: whereas here we just found three skinks, and so it's

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Speaker 1: really good that we can find some of the ones

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Speaker 1: that don't shuffle away to make sure we're doing everything

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Speaker 1: we can for these species.

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Speaker 2: What would actually have cost eighty five thousand dollars So

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Speaker 2: apparently there were three ecologists involved. Why was it so

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Speaker 2: expensive for a three week project.

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Speaker 1: It's the same thing that's so expensive whenever we do

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Speaker 1: roadworks or any kind of project. It's paying for people's

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Speaker 1: staffs and time and for expertise. You need to have

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Speaker 1: a certain level of expertise in training to be able

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Speaker 1: to do this, just as you need to to get

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Speaker 1: the construction managers going into pay for all the roadworks.

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Speaker 1: So that's why at the end of the day, it's

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Speaker 1: just more than one percent of the project. So I

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Speaker 1: think it's a good investment.

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Speaker 2: Do you know, you, James, you're going to be really

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Speaker 2: getting up people's getting on people's nerves saying it's less

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Speaker 2: than one percent. I mean, I know it's less than

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Speaker 2: one percent, but one percent plus one percent plus one

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Speaker 2: percent plus one percent plus one percent for every gecko

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Speaker 2: and skink and bird, it starts to add up.

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Speaker 1: I think that's that it always adds up to one

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Speaker 1: percent because you're just adding percentages, you.

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Speaker 2: Know what I'm saying. It's James, how endangered is the

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Speaker 2: gold striped gecko? How many do we have left?

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Speaker 1: We don't have a good estimate for how many they

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Speaker 1: are because people aren't investing in research on them. So

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Speaker 1: it's an unknown species, but it's classified as at risk

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Speaker 1: in decline as most of them are. There's over one

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three species of skink and gecko across

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Speaker 1: New Zealand. We're one of the richest biodiversity hot spots

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Speaker 1: in the world for them. So it's just another species

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Speaker 1: where we don't know what's happening and if we don't look,

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Speaker 1: it'll just disappear and be another plot on our record

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Speaker 1: for an extinct species.

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Speaker 2: All right, appreciate you try. James. That is Professor James Russell,

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Speaker 2: conservation biologist at Auckland University, talking about State Highway three

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Speaker 2: and New Plymouth where you will have a wider road,

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Speaker 2: but it will be delayed by three weeks and you

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Speaker 2: will have one percent added to your budget.

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Speaker 1: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, Listen live to

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Speaker 1: news talks.

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Speaker 2: It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio