APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
GLOSSARY
Biodiversity: the variety of all biological life – plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms – the genes they contain and the ecosystems on land or in water where they
live.
Biosecurity: the protection of people and natural resources, including biodiversity,
from unwanted organisms capable of causing harm.
Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI) Programme: a Ministry for the
Environment-led programme to develop and use indicators to measure and report on
environmental condition.
Ecosystem: an interacting system of living and non-living parts such as sunlight, air,
water, minerals and nutrients.
Feral species: a domesticated species that has become wild.
Habitat: the place or type of area in which an organism naturally occurs.
Indigenous species: a plant or animal species which occurs naturally in New Zealand.
Introduced species: a plant or animal that has been brought to New Zealand by
humans, either accidentally or by design.
Invasive species: a weed or pest animal that can adversely affect indigenous species
and ecosystems by altering genetic variation within species, or affecting the survival
of species, or the quality or sustainability of natural communities. In New Zealand,
invasive weeds and pest animals are almost always species that have been introduced
to the country.
Invertebrate: an animal without a backbone or spinal column.
Iwi: Maori tribal grouping.
Monitoring: the act of measuring change in the state, number or presence of
characteristics of something.
Open space: the city’s outdoor spaces, such as reserves, the Wellington Town Belt,
coastal reserves, outer green belt and other Council-owned lands that have ecological,
recreational, landscape and natural heritage values.
Pests: organisms that are capable of causing, at some time, a serious adverse and
unintended effect on people and/or the environment.
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Pest Management Plan 2004
Restoration: the active intervention and management of degraded biotic
communities, landforms and landscapes in order to restore biological character,
ecological and physical processes and their cultural and visual qualities.
Species: a group of organisms capable of inter-breeding freely with each other but
not with another species.
Pest Management Plan 2004
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