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Vote Nature

Vote Nature 2025.
Your vote. Your backyard. 

Vote Nature

Your council and your environment

Local and regional governments play a key role in managing the environment. By investing in environmental services, public transport, and infrastructure, the amount of money councils spend can improve the environmental quality of the place – or degrade it.

Some councils provide incentives and support landowners to protect nature on private land. Some fund community groups that protect nature. Councils regulate the environmental impacts of activities and police those regulations. 

Effective council regulation means cleaner rivers, healthier ecosystems, less erosion, and healthy coasts. Poor council regulation results in unswimmable rivers, toxic shellfish, polluted beaches, more damage from erosion and flooding, and diminishing what remains of our natural areas. 

The choices elected councillors make over the next three years will impact on quality of life and the environment.

OUR MESSAGE TO CANDIDATES

If elected, the decisions you make will have a big impact on the communities you represent. New Zealand is facing a warming climate, more extreme weather, and rising seas. We have all seen the impact of recent cyclones and the impact that poor land management decisions had on communities when Cyclone Gabrielle struck. Forest & Bird is calling on all candidates for local government to commit to working with nature to build community resilience in our changing world.

FOREST & BIRD’S PRIORITIES

  • Restoring and protecting our rivers and lakes
  • Protecting communities from climate change by protecting nature
  • Protecting nature on private land
  • Funding community conservation in your region
  • Protecting nature, people, and livelihoods by controlling pests.

DOWNLOAD OUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS 2025 DOCUMENT 

Find out the facts (with questions for candidates) about:

  • Nature-based solutions
  • Restoring and protecting our rivers and lakes
  • Protecting communities from climate change by protecting nature
  • Protecting nature on private land
  • Funding community conservation in your region
  • Protecting nature, people, and livelihoods by controlling pests

Nature needs your support

Supporting Forest & Bird is one of the best things you can do for New Zealand's environment. We need people like you to support us, so that nature will always have a voice.

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