Funding For Wilding Pine Control Set To More Than Double

Ajouté : 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Now, the government is more than doubling funding to tackle the spread of wilding pines. They announced an extra $79 million over 3 years taking total spend on the national wilding conifer control program to 109 million.

[00:00:19]The money will be targeted to high-priority areas including Queenstown, the Mackenzie Basin Marlborough, and the Central Plateau.

[00:00:26]Around 30 million of the new funding will come from the international visitor levy, while a new national pest management plan will also be developed to stop further spread. Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard says wilding pines are threatening productive farmland, biodiversity, water supplies, and increasing wildfire risk. And the minister joins me now. Andrew, good afternoon.

[00:00:50]Good afternoon, Leah. Hi, look, nice to talk to you. It's been a while. Um I mean, this is great news. More than Hang on, let's go first. More than 2 million hectares of land is already affected.

[00:01:01]Have I got that right?

[00:01:03]That's correct. Yes, 2 million hectares and left unchecked, it sort of grows at 5% uh per year. So, they reckon there's potentially up to 7 million hectares of New Zealand that could be affected and uh I think it's about a quarter of New Zealand that could be affected by these if um we do nothing. Yeah. And And the problem didn't appear overnight though, did it? Wilding pines were introduced more than a century ago, often with good intentions. Is this a case of us now dealing with these unintended consequences of of past policy?

[00:01:40]Yeah, and it's not just the introduction of um some of these varieties of pine that's part of the problem, but also previous decisions that were made of, "Okay, let's retire this land here from grazing." And then suddenly um basically, that land was doing nothing, so no one was managing it and suddenly the seeds blew in and they started growing and before we knew it, uh what was an open sort of range station uh is now a tightly packed um pine forest that's got very little valuable pines in it and spreading seeds to infect more area.

[00:02:18]See, now that's a problem, Andrew. I I know when I've when I've thought about this over the years cuz I've spoken with food farmers and other you know, other concerned uh you know, organizations over the years.

[00:02:28]The real It's sad because we've got the wood there, but you're saying a lot of it we just can't use or or or it's not it's not productive, you know, pine.

[00:02:37]Yeah. Yeah, cuz I mean it's basically some of the species uh no use for timber. Um some of the ones that could be of use for timber, you know, that it's not planted properly for use in production, it's not near roads, it's not set up to design for harvesting or any so basically if we tried to harvest it in many cases um we wouldn't make it it'd cost us more trying to harvest it than it would just chop it down or spray it out and yeah. Yeah, there are a couple of uh places where they have identified that actually yes, we should get in and harvest them and make use of it where it's actually economically feasible to do that um but in most places it's not.

[00:03:24]And some of the the areas I mentioned um Andrew at the beginning, Queenstown, McKenzie Basin and there's a few others, walk us through why they are the highest priority cuz as you know, there'll be other areas throughout the country where other regions are thinking, "Hey, well, hang on. We've got some bloody problems, too, with our wilding pine."

[00:03:44]Yeah, yeah, and look, this funding isn't just going to those regions. It's about making sure we're across the board um making, you know, getting ahead on this problem wherever it is. We don't want to just focus on one area and let another area go backwards.

[00:03:59]Um, the reason why those areas have been targeted in a number of cases is because they're a source of, um, the source seed coming from them. So, the seed source area.

[00:04:11]And, um, they really need to, you know, wipe them back because it's from those places where the seed's blowing and covering more land and creating more problems. And I've I've seen a few people going, "Oh, what why is the government paying for this? Why don't the land owners pay for it?" Um, because they land owner in this case is the government. Um, 85% of these things exist on government land. So, it's about us as government actually being good neighbors and not letting our problems, um, go across boundary fences into private land. And to be fair, farmers have also borne the cost for lots of, um, removal or or trying to get on top of it. You know, it's not like they've just sat back and watched it take up their productive land. They've had to get out and do it off their own back as well. Um, yeah, and so many of those Yeah, many of those farmers that are affected by it, they'll be out there pulling the seedlings or chopping them down or spraying them on their own properties, um, at their cost. Um, but their biggest frustration is the fact that they they keep doing this year after year after year and the seeds keep blowing, um, on the land from these other places and keep landing on their farm and keep growing. So, it's about stopping that that spread.