An Independent Review of New Zealand's Biosecurity Surveillance Systems-Monitoring of Existing Pests

Monitoring Of Existing Pest Status

The distribution of toxic dinoflagellates is monitored by the Ministries of Agriculture and Health for the purpose of avoiding toxic marine food entering the local or exported human food supply;
There is a system for monitoring the distribution of pest fish species and of a range of undesirable freshwater weeds. There does not, however, appear to be provision for a planned response to findings;
DOC maintains Surveillance programmes directed at monitoring the spread of pest plants and of vertebrate pests in order that they can mount appropriate responses when threats to native flora or fauna in highly valued areas are recognised;
Regional Councils maintain a range of programmes to monitor local pests and weeds to meet local objectives;
The impending introduction of pest indicators as part of the national indicator monitoring programme under the Resource Management Act should lead to the establishment of clearer monitoring objectives for Regional Councils.

Some information on the distribution and movement of pests and weeds is collected by DOC and RCs;
Some information is gathered on the health of plantation forests;
The toxic dinoflagellate monitoring programme is highly effective in providing market access and protecting New Zealanders from toxic seafood;
Regional Councils monitor the performance of their Regional Pest Management Strategies against specific objectives.

Again there is an absence of any unifying statement of purpose, an absence of overarching strategy, an absence of strategy statements within Ministries and no formal coordination mechanisms with Regional Councils;
There is an absence of technical objectives for almost all monitoring programmes;
Regional Councils have a wide range of pest monitoring programmes with local objectives which are inconsistent and often in conflict when viewed from a national perspective;
There is no overall system for gathering, analysing and interpreting information about the behaviour of endemic diseases of animals and plants;
There is no national system for collating information about the distribution of endemic pests and weeds and much of this information is not readily accessible;
There are no incentives for the maintenance of many of the databases which supposedly hold the definitive information on occurrence and distribution of pests and weeds

The absence of any programmes to temporally or spatially monitor syndromic changes in plants, animals or indigenous species is a significant weakness that should be addressed;
As a matter of high priority database coordination should be undertaken to provide higher quality access to known information on the distribution of pests and weeds in NZ. It seems likely that in fact there is a substantial amount of information about the distribution of pests and weeds within New Zealand and some information on spatial and temporal trends but this information is not readily available in any comprehensive system;
There needs to be better coordination of monitoring objectives between Government agencies and Regional Councils;
Government agencies will need to comply with the monitoring objectives that form the pest indicators project.

Page last updated: 17 December 2008