Principles of response to detections of new plant pest species and the effectiveness of surveillance

Abstract

Surveillance for new plant pests and organisms is an ongoing challenge for the biosecurity of New Zealand The biggest challenge arises when prioritising which pests to target as it is not feasible to run active surveillance programmes for the large numbers of pests associated with productive and indigenous ecosystems Most plant pest detections are through general surveillance which relies on the public and scientific community to notice and report incursions to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) MAF recognises the limitations of such an ad hoc process and the resulting implications for responding to incursions of new pests especially for prospects of containment and eradication This paper presents three incursion scenarios recognised by MAF and outlines how the level of pest surveillance affects the outcome for incursion management