Can New Zealand's indigenous dryland ecosystems be rehabilitated by facilitating inherent successional tendencies to enhance development of indigenous‐dominated and often woody communities in the long term? Here, we describe the geographic distribution of woody communities of New Zealand's South Island drylands to generate hypotheses about successional trajectories to future vegetation states. Presences and absences of woody s...

We measured the net progress of land reform in achieving a national policy goal for biodiversity conservation in the context of ongoing clearing of native vegetation and additions of land to a highly nonrepresentative (residual) reserve network, interior South Island, New Zealand. We used systematic conservation‐planning approaches to develop a spatially explicit index of risk of biodiversity loss (RBL). The index incorporated...

We examined trends over six consecutive spring seasons in three “spring annual” herbs, Myosurus minimus subsp. novae‐zelandiae (Ranunculaceae), Ceratocephalapungens (Ranunculaceae), and Myosotis pygmaea var. minutiflora (Boraginaceae), in terms of their habitats and site land uses in several rare, non‐forest ecosystems. On dry hillslopes, saline soils, and turfs of ephemeral wetlands (including coastal turfs), Ceratocephala an...