 Matthew Monaghan here with Kiwi Connect, and I'm here with Al Bramley at the New Frontiers 2015 Festival. And Al would love to get an introduction from you. Tell us a bit about who you are and what you're up to. Sure. I'm the CEO of a new entity that's been established between the New Zealand Department of Conservation and Philanthropic Trust, which is the next foundation. And we've been established to try and crack some of New Zealand's big pest control problems so that we've got a new way of working in the future that's much more sustainable than how we do it now. Great. And can you frame for us this really big issue of pest control and pest problems in New Zealand and why it's so important? Sure. So in most places in the world, if you stop cutting down your habitat and you stop hunting the things that are important, ecosystems recover. But in New Zealand, that's not the case. In New Zealand, we have a number of invasive species that arrived very late because we're late to be discovered, and those invasive species are still gnawing away at our native biodiversity and heading them towards extinction. So we don't have the luxury of doing nothing. We have to go after them if we're to maintain our diversity. And so earlier today we heard from Lou Sanson at the Department of Conservation and it really became clear in that discussion, I think to many of us, that this pest control problem is one of the primary issues and challenges that we face as it relates to conservation in New Zealand. And so curious if you can talk a bit about where are we at in terms of solving it, addressing it, and since you've spent so much time thinking about this, your point of view on what the possible solutions that are. So at the moment, our traditional model of pest control is around suppression. So we knock them down to low levels and then we come back in a year's time or two years time and knock them down again. And the majority of our work at the moment relies on aerial toxins to do that. And apart from that, we also do a lot of ground base trapping, but that never can reach usually very deep into the back country and it's very labor intensive. So if we're going to find sustainable solutions for the future, we need to come up with another way. Now in New Zealand, we've managed to clear a number of our offshore islands of pests completely. We've taken them off, removed them, and we've been able to defend them from re-invasion. We now do very large islands. We've done islands up to 11,000 hectares in size. What I want to do and what my team want to do is work out ways of bringing the zero predator environment to New Zealand mainland. And we're going to start with Peninsula's. But at the moment, we're charged with finding the new tools and techniques that will enable us to do that. At the moment, the concept's really simple. We want to put some form of barrier on through the landscape, across a peninsula, but not a physical fence. And behind that barrier, we will remove the key predators, which are rat, stoats, and possums, and then maintain them at zero density through clever detection. But there's a number of technological hurdles that we need to solve to crack that problem. Can you talk about maybe a couple of the key technological hurdles that we don't have a solution for yet and inviting anyone watching this video to think about? So the big one is detection. At the moment, we do have technology's community willing that we can remove predators. We probably need better technologies, but we've got some. We even can build barriers that look like they don't leak that much. There's lots of room for improvement in those, but they work kind of okay. But the big gap in the tool set is if a rat arrives tomorrow on a peninsula that's large, how do we find it fast enough before it builds a big population and undoes all the good that we've managed to achieve? So detection in a big landscape of an invader is our key problem. So we essentially detect the pests, we trap and remove the pests, and if any get through the barriers, we create barriers so that they can't penetrate certain areas. We've done pretty well at the barriers and we've done pretty well and we have some ideas of how we can really do the trapping and removal, but the detection and the early detection, especially when there's a small population set, that's the key area that we need to focus on. How much exploration has gone into sensor technology, drone technology, radio frequency, maybe at the trap level, these types, how sophisticated are we talking about the current experimentation? So it'd be fair to say we've been thinking about it for maybe a year. And at the moment we have a little bit of technology that involves linking up sensors using UHF technology and sending to satellite. But to be honest, that's okay, but we're convinced there'll be better systems. Systems that may rely on, I don't know, DNA technology to help us identify what's turned up in a catchment so that we can just sample the water around the coast edge or maybe some form of imaging that helps us realize what's arrived. The less infrastructure we put on the ground or have to put on the ground, the better because you've got to maintain it. So ideally we would have a system that might be eerily based or you could pulse in there at whatever frequency you need so the population doesn't get a chance to explode. And so one of the themes that was discussed today is just how, while there are specific characteristics of this problem that are unique in New Zealand, it's really a global problem, a global issue at many levels and I'm curious just any reflections on the collaboration with other nations, communities and so forth globally and what you see as a potential role for New Zealand in that as well as what you hope to learn from others. Sure, at the moment it'd be fair to say that New Zealand has a bit of a reputation in how to remove invasive soft islands. That's something that we do export but it'd be fair to say we haven't developed the technologies to do it on our mainland. If we can say, for example, find out ways of detecting and deterring rats, then those are going to be very exportable technologies. I mean food security is often related to rat or rodent abundance. So although we're seeking the solutions for conservation and for biodiversity gain, we know that there'll be quite transferable technologies to a lot of other things that need to get on top of rat. And one thing you mentioned to me just earlier in conversation is just how at this particular juncture in New Zealand's time in history, there's an invitation for partnerships and it sounds like your organization is established based on a multi-party partnership and alliance and I'm just curious any reflections on that as it relates to public and private sector and philanthropic sector and so forth. So it's quite a unique time I think in New Zealand's history. Conservation used to be done over there and it was a nice to have. But I think increasingly we've realized and the world's realizing that biodiversity is essential for our well-being, whether it be for our recreational enjoyment or whether it be for clean water or carbon sequestration, it's underpinning. There's a realization going on, it's underpinning our existence. Now the trouble is that in order for us to be economically, socially and culturally wealthy, we've got to look after those places. And so the Department of Conservation in New Zealand is reaching out to New Zealand and the world to say this problem is big. We want to maintain these amazing assets but we need help because this is a big problem. And so we're in a position where we're reaching out to the world saying have you got any good ideas for helping us solve our problems? We would love if they become your problems and I'm sure they'll be spinoffs. So yep, we're very keen to hear from people that have ideas or energy or time who would like to help us crack those problems. And so how if someone has energy or time or resources and they want to plug in on this, how do they do that? Okay, so we've just formed a new entity only a fortnight ago. So this is brand new but they'll be welcome to contact me directly. So at the moment my email address is alatzip.org.nz So it's pretty simple, as I say that again, alatzip.org.nz Yep, ZIP, yep. Yeah sorry, that's the English accent. And yeah, we'll have a website up in the not too distant future and also if you go on the Next Foundation website, you'll see a link to us talking about the type of problems we're working on. Anything else you would like to share? Just having been here today with you guys, it feels like a really special opportunity to link up with a bunch of people that are future fagers to very open and who also have a really positive outlook. So we appreciate that. Thank you for being here. Thanks for your time. Cheers.