Posted: 03 December 2009
More flexible approach to North’s plant, animal pests
Members of the public are being asked for their views on two new strategies designed to provide a more streamlined, flexible regime for managing Northland’s plant and animal pests.
The Northland Regional Council currently has more than 20 separate strategies to deal with pest plants and animals but wants to cut that back to two; one for plants, the second for animals, including insects and pest fish. (A new, third strategy to deal specifically with marine pests is being developed separately.)
Don McKenzie, the Council’s Biosecurity Senior Programme Manager, says the two proposed strategies were notified last month with the public originally given until 18 December to comment.
However, that submission period has now been extended until Monday 11 January to ensure interested people had extra time to make comment over the Christmas-New Year break.
Mr McKenzie says merging the 20 existing strategies into just two will not only simplify things and remove unnecessary duplication, it will also allow for more flexibility to respond to changes in pest populations, distribution and impacts.
“Funding will also be able to be pooled, rather than rigidly allocated to individual pests.” (The Regional Council currently spends about $1 million annually on pest control.)
He says a review of the existing strategies had highlighted the
growing impact plant and animal pests are having in Northland.
In response, 33 extra plants like Taiwan cherry and the pasture weed gravel groundsel had been included in the proposed plant strategy, taking the total number of pest plants it would cover to 109. A greater emphasis would also be placed on investigating options for biological control of pest plants.
An extra 21 animal and insect pests would also be included in the proposed animal strategy. Wild pigs would be among the 51 animals covered and the proposed strategy would provide an opportunity for interested communities to address the impacts feral pigs and other species were having in their local areas.
Meanwhile, Mr McKenzie says the pathogen kauri dieback disease (although not a plant or animal pest) will also be addressed within the proposed strategies because of the risks it poses to Northland’s iconic kauri forests.
All three pest management strategies will be funded within the Regional Council’s existing Biosecurity budget.
Mr McKenzie says anyone interested in commenting on the proposed pest plant or pest animal strategies can obtain copies from any Regional Council office.
Alternatively, they can be downloaded from the Council’s website via: www.nrc.govt.nz/pestmanagementreview