Plains Profile 

July 2010

Crown land will be required to meet ‘good neighbour’ obligations in regional pest management strategies.

This means all land owners in New Zealand will be bound to control pests, such as rabbits and wilding trees, so that they don’t ‘spill over’ and affect their neighbours.

The cost of established pests to our economy runs close to $1.9 billion a year - $1.15 billion of lost production and $719 million in directly preventing pests from arriving in New Zealand and managing them once they are here.

We want to ensure that the Crown meets its obligations as a responsible landowner and to develop a unified approach to pest management for all land.

A proposed Pest Management Plan of Action to support this approach has been released for public consultation. The Plan of Action looks at ways to ensure our pest management strategies limit this cost, and meet the needs of today and challenges of tomorrow.

This will help drive a new national policy direction which will further strengthen and align pest management plans as they are developed. MAF has been working closely with regional councils, industry, Maori, the science community and other government departments to design the proposed improvements.

These include streamlining and simplifying pest management strategies;  establishing a central "toolbox manager" to ensure that effective and safe pest control tools are available in future; providing a way to assign lead accountability for a pest issue where this is unclear; improving role clarity; a national system for measuring effectiveness of pest management.

Work still needs to be done to ensure that pest management strategies deliver the best protection possible and impose equitable costs on all landowners.

Submissions to the proposed National Plan of Action 2010-2035 close in 19 July 2010.

For more information go to www.biosecurity.govt.nz/biosec/consult/pmpn-plan-of-action2010-2035.