13 December 2007
Fish models help conservation
New Zealand’s native fish species are a key component of our freshwater biodiversity. New statistical models which depict the distribution of 30 native species are playing a valuable role in their conservation management and will be valuable in setting restoration targets.
The models have been developed by NIWA and Department of Conservation scientists using fish distribution data from the New Zealand Freshwater Fish database, along with environmental data. They not only show the importance of different habitat factors in determining the distributions of each species, but also can be used to predict the probability of capture, species by species, for New Zealand’s rivers and streams – even those for which no inventory data is available.