Pest Management Plan targets healthy environment

Smothering, strangling, displacing, infecting, browsing, killing. There are many ways pest plants and animals can undermine our biodiversity and primary production and, as a consequence, seriously threaten the health of our native and productive plants and animals.

Greater Wellington Regional Council's proposed Regional Pest Management Plan, now out for public consultation, focuses squarely on protecting and enhancing the health and vitality of the region's environment.

It charts how we can work together as a community to create sustainable regional biosecurity by eradicating, containing or controlling the pest plants and animals that compromise our environment.

"For our native plants and animals to thrive without threat we have to remain vigilant, take the most up to date approach to pest management and work with others to anticipate and manage the challenge posed by pest plants and animals," says Greater Wellington General Manager, Catchment, Wayne O’Donnell.

The proposed plan outlines the framework for efficiently and effectively managing or eradicating specified organisms in the Wellington region.

"The plan will minimise the adverse environmental effects of pest plants and animals through co-ordinating activity which will exclude them from the region or reduce their number or contain them in particular locations and ensure we monitor them," says Mr O’Donnell.

The proposed plan will update its 10 year old predecessor and ensure it is consistent with the Government's National Policy Direction for Pest Management. Once agreed it will remain in force for 20 years.

The proposed plan sits within a biosecurity framework supported by a number of complementary policies and plans, including Greater Wellington's Biodiversity Strategy, the Key Native Ecosystem Programme and Wellington City Council's "Our Nature Capital" Wellington's biodiversity strategy and action plan 2015."

"Biodiversity matters, it enriches our natural environment and our lives, but it isn't a given. Restoring and sustaining our natural capital will take resources, effort and commitment. The proposed plan draws these factors together."

The public is invited to provide its feedback on the proposed plan until 27 July. Copies of the plan and the submission form and process can be found on Have Your Say. 

ENDS

More information: Stephen Heath, Greater Wellington media phone 021 914 266

Notes for editors

What biosecurity techniques will be used?

The strategy proposes to control pests and organisms using the following approaches:

• Exclusion: to stop them getting  into, or moving into, new parts of the region
• Eradication: to remove them over time
• Progressive containment: to reduce their number and spread over time
• Sustained control programme: to reduce their impact
• Site-led programme: to exclude or eradicate them to protect particularly valuable places.

What are we managing and how are we doing it?