By Deborah Diaz
The search for the painted apple moth will be widened today.
Properties within 1km of the infestation in a Waitakere City industrial area will be checked by forestry crews over the next week.
However, officials are cautiously optimistic that the outbreak of the Australian import is concentrated on five Glendene
industrial properties, which were sprayed with insecticide on Saturday. Another infected property had been found within 300m of the cluster.
Chief forestry officer Dr Ruth Frampton said that although the infestation was intense, it appeared to be highly localised.
If that were the case, eradication should be possible through ground spraying.
Forestry crews sprayed the affected properties with the organo-phosphate spray chorpyrifos, used by horticulturists to control moth pests. Dr Frampton said that if the spraying were successful, the bulk of the moth population could be killed quickly.
Respraying and monitoring would continue, probably until the end of the year. "The difficulty is always getting the last insect," she said.
The moth had probably been shipped here in a container. It was an Australian native and generally considered a minor pest there, although it was sporadically a problem on pine and acacia trees.
It had natural predators in Australia which kept the population in check. In this country it was a more serious threat than the white-spotted tussock moth because it fed on a wider range of trees.
The female can lay as many as 700 eggs in a single batch, and produce several generations a year.
Anyone finding one of the caterpillars with their distinctive hairy tufts should call the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. However, it resembles many others and the ministry has been swamped by false alarms.
The painted apple moth helpline, in office hours, is 09 627 2534.
