The New Zealand Ecological Restoration Network (NZERN) is a nationwide network of practitioners. Landcare groups, farmers, Maori tribes, youth clubs, conservation groups, native plant nurseries and pest control contractors make up its members. Members share a common involvement in habitat protection and restoration. The network started in Christchurch in 1998 and since then has spread out in all directions. After covering most of the South Island by 2000, it "jumped the ditch" to the North Island in 2001. These days, the leaders of local groups with restoration projects run the regional NZERN branches. Regional phone books called "Restoration Directories" are produced which list all projects, native plant nurseries and organisations involved. These directories are widely distributed and enable people to contact each other directly. Field days, which enable training and sharing of information by participants, are also organised.

NZERN volunteers have built and operate a centralised Internet-based information system. This system is called Pipi and has been very popular, receiving up to 300,000 hits a month on the main website. NZERN has ended up being overwhelmed by its success and efforts are now underway to build a comprehensive "Enterprise" system that can support thousands of registered users. It will have many modules, including GIS mapping, a content management system, and groupware and decision support tools. These web-based tools will help a user choose plants for planting and find out about controlling weeds, propagating native plants, and monitoring changes in native habitat. Pipi is due to be completed in July 2005. Growing recognition of this effort has led to funding by government agencies and a recent donation of GIS software by ESRI, including ArcIMS. Users will be able to import and export their own information and choose to make it available to others.

Since the advent of the Internet, only 5% of information is now being published as books or magazines. Along with the popularity of programs like Access, this has spawned the proliferation of databases with ensuing duplication and a mishmash of standards. This "Tower of Babel" has led to the saying, ‘data integration or disintegration’. NZERN volunteers are making great efforts to ensure international standards are used where they exist. But complicating this is a lack of integration among all government organisations at national and local levels. NZERN plans to enable data sharing using XML based web services with as many organisations as possible. A cause for hope has been the international efforts of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) to establish international standards for exchanging biological based information.

The NZERN website is www.bush.org.nz
TDWG website is www.tdwg.org