A $70 million southern saltmarsh mosquito eradication programme is on track to be completed in 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) says.
In its latest issue of Biosecurity, MAF documents the struggle to rid the country of the mosquito, first discovered in New Zealand in 1999.
The mosquito, from Australia, can carry the debilitating human disease, ross river virus.
Ross river virus causes symptoms such as sore muscles and joints, fever, chills, sweating, headaches and tiredness.
Though it is not fatal, in some cases it can take more than a year to recover.
A programme to eradicate the pest has been in place since its discovery, and it has been identified at 12 separate sites throughout the country.
MAF said the programme has successfully eliminated the mosquito from all but three of the sites, and is on track to declare eradication by 2010.
If elimination is completed as planned by then, it is estimated the programme will have cost around $70 million and taken 11 years.
The three remaining locations are Kaipara, the Coromandel and Blenheim.
No larvae or adults have been identified in Kaipara since July 2006. Subject to no further finds in the area, the mosquito will be considered eradicated in August.
There have been no finds in the Coromandel since April 2007.
However, isolated incidents of larvae continued to be found in a confined area of the Blenheim eradication zone, with the most recent discovery in December 2007.
MAF said intensive surveillance was continuing and it would be another two years before eradication could be declared, even assuming no further finds.
- NZPA
