Stakeholder Update - MAF Biosecurity to lift movement controls in Whirinaki area

22 April 2009

We are now in the happy position of being able to declare Red Imported Fire Ants eradicated from the Whirinaki area effective 4pm on Wednesday 22 April 2009. The eradication declaration will also allow the lifting of all movement controls in your area and MAFBNZ would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the help you provided to achieve this successful conclusion.

A Controlled Area was put in place to prevent the inadvertent spread of any remaining fire ant colonies on contaminated material by placing restrictions on moving risk items beyond a single property within the Controlled Area or out of the Controlled Area without prior approval. This extended 2 kilometres out from the original nest site at Whirinaki, and covered an area on State Highway 2 between the Esk River in the south, Whirinaki Bluff in the north, and an arc between those points from the coast to two kilometres inland.

While movement controls were essential from a biosecurity point of view we do understand that this caused inconvenience and quite a lot of extra work for people working and living in the area. There must have been times when it was a hindrance to your daily routine but we received very few complaints and compliance was never really an issue and the results of this co-operation speak for themselves.

While we carried out the business end of the eradication programme it was the considerable help and goodwill we enjoyed from people such as you that made this positive end result possible.

More information is also available on the MAFBNZ website www.biosecurity.govt.nz.

Contact: Annie Wright, Senior Communications Adviser, Biosecurity New Zealand 04 894 0654 or 029 894 0654