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Indigenous vegetation such as grassland provides a range of services of varying values to humanity, depending on grassland
type and degree of intactness. Understanding this complex relationship in a particular ecosystem or related ecosystems is most
important and should be an integral component of environmental planning. To set the scene, some historical aspects of the origins,
development, management and research in New Zealand’s indigenous grasslands are described, and changes in land tenure are outlined
to provide a background against which the ecosystem services that grasslands have to offer can be better understood. The ecosystem
services that different grassland types are able to provide are described according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment categories,
especially those of provisioning (biodiversity values); regulating (water production, pollination, biological control); cultural (educational,
scientifi c, recreational and tourism values); and supporting (soil conservation values, carbon storage and sequestration). The
threats to these services are then described with emphasis on land use (grazing and intensifi cation, mining), invasive weeds and invertebrates,
and climate change. We conclude by pointing out that indigenous grassland ecosystems deliver a wide range of important
ecosystem services that provide many tangible benefi ts to human well-being, which are best protected in public ownership and managed
as a critically important public-good resource.