Cabinet set to kill off $11m pest blitz

By ANNE BESTON

The Government is expected today to abandon a multimillion-dollar pest eradication attempt in West Auckland.

Four options for controlling the painted apple moth are to be put to the Cabinet, and the one most likely to be adopted would lead to the eradication programme being ditched.

Forest and Bird's Wellington-based biosecurity officer, Geoff Keey, said he understood that Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry papers for the Cabinet recommended the Government adopt a "long-term management" approach to the moth.

The papers are understood to say the controversial $11 million, six-month ground and aerial insecticide campaign, which included dumping insecticide over 3000 West Auckland homes, has failed and eradication is no longer an option.

The four options are:

* A 25,000ha-50,000ha blanket spray programme.

* No further action.

* Accept the moth is here to stay and control its spread.

* Extend the present helicopter spray zone to 2000ha-3000ha - about five times the present area.

A fifth option - an alternative wanted by the community advisory group appointed for the programme by MAF - involves getting rid of the moth without aerial spraying.

MAF's most recent estimate of the damage to forestry and horticulture from painted apple moth was $48 million over 20 years.

Mr Keey urged the Government not to follow MAF's advice.

"They should maintain an effective eradication programme ... We are talking about the insect equivalent of the possum," he said.

"Just because MAF stuffed it up is no reason to give up now."

MAF had been slow to contain the pest and had been fighting a losing battle ever since.

"They should have contained it but instead they started in the centre of the infestation and they've been chasing it outwards ever since."

Forests that housed some of New Zealand's most vulnerable native birds, including kiwi, were at risk from the moth, he said.

Preliminary research showed it was able to complete its lifecycle on native beech.

"The last thing we need is to have saved South Island forests from logging to have them eaten by painted apple moth."

A spokeswoman for Biosecurity Minister Jim Sutton confirmed that MAF papers on the future of the West Auckland operation would go to the Cabinet today, but she could not say if a decision would be made or when it might be announced.

Forest owner Bill Studholme, a member of the Forestry Owners Association, said abandoning eradication of the moth would be "crazy and irresponsible".

He said the moth was not just a forestry industry problem. It would also affect conservation and horticulture.

Kubi Witten-Hannah, a long-term critic of MAF's handling of the moth incursion and chairman of the MAF-appointed community advisory group, said he would be disappointed if the Government opted for control rather than eradication.

"We would still like to think it's possible to have an effective eradication programme," he said.

"To abandon it now is throwing money down the drain."

He said proper research into the moth had never been completed and the ministry had adopted a "penny-pinching" approach.

Residents' health concerns about the aerial operation had not been taken seriously.

The aerial campaign, started in January, attracted strong opposition, including street protests, from some West Auckland residents.

The moth, a native of Australia, was discovered in Glendene in 1999.

The ministry's aerial insecticide campaign has dramatically reduced the number of moths caught in baited traps - from more than 900 a week at the height of summer to just a handful over recent weeks.

But new infestations are being found outside the target zone.

Scientists suspect the weather is having as much effect on the moth population as the Btk insecticide used in the spraying because the insect does not like the cold.

nzherald.co.nz/environment