Regional Pest Management Strategies

Pest species in Northland are listed in the Regional Pest Management Strategies (RPMS). These strategies provide guidance on how pest plants and animals should be managed in the region.

During the 2008-2009 financial year the Council began the process of reviewing the RPMS and decided to merge the existing 25 documents into three – marine pests, animal pests and plant pests. This process was completed during 2009-2010 and the new RPMS were ratified by the Council in July 2010.

The RPMS have been developed to address new pest threats while providing for more flexible management of existing pests. The new strategies cover a broad suite of plants and animals, and introduce a new category, marine pests. They aim to ‘future-proof' pest management and reduce the impact that pests are having on our region's economic, environmental and cultural values.

The new RPMS (Marine, Plant and Animal) place greater emphasis on investigating new options for controlling pest plants, such as biological control, and also increasing the scale of pest control areas to link existing community projects – such as Community Pest Control Areas (CPCA) – to protect biodiversity on private land in Northland.

Photo: Existing Community Pest Control Areas in Northland.

Click here to enlarge Existing Community Pest Control Areas in Northland (JPG 378 KB)