The regional council may not have the resources required to combat pests in Otago, a councillor says.
The Otago Regional Council’s environmental delivery committee received a mid-term review of the council’s 2019-29 Otago regional pest management plan yesterday.
The report by consultants Sapere found the council was "partially effective" in achieving the objectives of its plan to exclude, eradicate, contain or control the 51 pest species it addressed.
Cr Michael Laws said since he joined the council table in 2016 the effectiveness of the council’s pest management had been "a constant issue".
Cr Laws said whether the council had the resources to deal with Otago’s pest issues was "something we have yet to address".
"We haven’t been doing a good job with pests and the problem is we don’t know how bad the job we’ve been doing is, or how good.
"Out of this discussion today we’ve learned that we’re not actually going to spend any more on compliance. We’re just going to re-prioritise.
"It’s quite an important issue to come out of today’s discussion and I wonder if when we are trying to combat pests — which grow with their threat by every passing year — and when we are being urged to be proactive, not reactive, if we really do have the resources at hand to be able to do the job we’re still required to do."
Cr Kevin Malcolm said the Sapere report’s characterisation of the council being "not effective" in reducing wallaby populations and preventing the pest’s spread was unfair.
He questioned Sapere managing consultant Dr Julius Ohrnberger about the matter, saying the report had not weighed up any "baseline" data.
"If you didn’t know or we didn’t know the wallaby population in Otago at the start of the [pest management plan] or where the wallabies actually were in Otago, how can you now tell us that both those measures are not effective — and that’s reducing the wallaby population ultimately to a zero density by 2029 and preventing their spread?"
Dr Ohrnberger said early on in the 10-year pest plan reports of wallabies were received from near the Canterbury border where the pests enter Otago.
"Later on, we found that reported wallabies were deeper into Otago.
"So therefore, our conclusion is ... eradication is not achieved," he said.
Cr Kelliher said the council’s strategy changed a couple of years ago and he questioned whether a review of its overall strategy was now required.
Where once the council had pursued enforcement region-wide, it was now "heavily focused in certain hot-spot areas and then maybe reactionary to other areas as they appeared".
Cr Gretchen Robertson said the council knew "compliance isn’t all about enforcement".
"There’s a lot of ‘top of the cliff’ rather than ‘bottom of the cliff’ that goes into good compliance, but actually, at the bottom of the cliff, we will need to be enforcing, so I guess moving towards that, there’s some work that needs to be done on that compliance approach."
The committee yesterday recommended council take action on a range of recommendations from the report.
Among them, from July 1, the council would increase the number of new and reinspections, but consider targeting areas with the highest biodiversity or economic or cultural value first, a staff report said
It would also target enforcement efforts where investments and awareness was already in place, such as with the pests old man’s beard, rabbits, bomarea and wilding pines, it said.
