This report summarises the Sub-Antarctic ling stock (LIN 5&6, excluding LIN 6B) and fishery with spatial structure of the stock, biological parameters, and standardised catch per unit effort (CPUE).

This document describes the operation of rapid updates of New Zealand red rock lobster stock assessments for CRA 1, CRA 2, & CRA 3 done in October 2020. Full stock assessments for each stock are generally done once every 5 years and require significant time and effort. Rapid updates repeat the previous full stock assessment with new data. Rapid updates do not aim to replace full stock assessments but complement them by providing inference about stock status in the years between full assessments.

The purpose of these guidelines is to inform the sustainable development of open ocean finfish farming in New Zealand by providing robust and practical guidance to minimise and mitigate effects on marine mammals. The guidelines focus on mitigation of interactions through site selection, design, and operation of farm infrastructure through carefully designed monitoring programmes to assess the effectiveness of mitigation measures.

The purpose of these guidelines is to inform the sustainable development of open ocean finfish farming in New Zealand by providing robust and practical guidance to minimise and mitigate effects on seabirds. The guidelines focus on mitigation of interactions through site selection, design, and operation of farm infrastructure through carefully designed monitoring programmes to assess the effectiveness of mitigation measures.

Freshwater eel stock assessment requires reliable indices of abundance. A new spatially distributed modelling approach for stream networks was developed using the R package VAST to standardise time series of spatial observations, estimating spatial and temporal variation, habitat associations, and correlations among categories. The new methods generate time series of predictions that are more accurate than previous methods. The models performed well at estimating trends.

This report examines the potential for increasing net removals by pre-1990 forests towards NZ’s NDC target in terms of new practices, their impacts on net removals, their applicability to different forest types and the extent of those forests, and the opportunity to incentivise these management changes.

The report provides estimates of the financial impact on forest growers with pre-1990 forests if they were able to gain carbon recognition for changing forestry practice; specifically if they, changed forest management, rotation length, final crop stocking, growth rate, or converted from a production forest to a permanent forest

International forestry accounting rules under the Paris Agreement allow accounting for carbon sequestration above business-as-usual reference levels in pre-1990 forest that can be shown to result from forest management. This report assesses: management options that may promote carbon sequestration in pre-1990 natural forests relative to baseline levels, conditions where increased sequestration is likely to be observed, the potential magnitude of sequestration responses, and the potential uptake by landowners.

This report evaluates the European Forest Reference Level (FRL) approach proposed for EU member States, as the potential basis for developing New Zealand’s Forest Reference Level. Alternatives to this approach for NZ are also discussed that align with NZ’s national carbon inventory, available data, national circumstances, and forest management practices.