Initially found stripping trees in the Te Pohue district on the Napier-Taupo highway, another severe infestation was spotted by chance by former Federated Farmers national president Bruce Wills 50km away as the beetle flies at Te Mata, Havelock North.
The ministry’s biosecurity division last week admitted the beetle was widespread in Hawke’s Bay and management was now the appropriate response because eradication was impossible.
The pest was a new eucalypt beetle to NZ, called Paropsisterna variicollis, the variegated eucalyptus beetle, without the natural predators and controls found in its home country, Australia.
It was not the same eucalyptus leaf beetle (Paropsisterna beata) found in Whiteman’s Valley, Upper Hutt, in late 2012.
That biosecurity outbreak was controlled by aerial and ground spraying of affected trees and the ground around them and three summers later eradication was declared.
At the time MPI said the beetle could become a serious pest on eucalypts in NZ if widely established.
MPI’s spokesman Brad Chandler, a senior adviser in the plants and environment response team, said there was no conclusive evidence for the new pest’s pathway into Hawke’s Bay.
Since March the response team had established that it was widespread, at least 50km in radius, and that contractors for control measures, held in readiness, had been stood down.
Asked why MPI had kept the outbreak quiet for two months, Chandler said it wanted to go out with advice and had consulted national and international insect experts.
“I haven’t been satisfied with its response to giant willow aphid and I have heard comments that MPI doesn’t listen and doesn’t understand the seriousness of what is going on.”
Bruce Wills
Willow and Poplar Trust
It was preparing notification to landowners, forest owners and the public.
He confirmed the comments of landowners who said the beetle had now climbed or flown down from the tops of trees and gone to ground for winter.
Therefore control measures would be delayed until spring and summer.
Wills, who is also the chairman of the NZ Willow and Poplar Trust, said farmers wanted to help MPI but were increasingly concerned about outbreaks of pests and weeds like the giant willow aphid (GWA), velvet leaf and now eucalyptus beetles.
He knew first-hand about the eucalyptus beetle and the trust had recently been turned down for a research grant in response to the GWA threat.
“I haven’t been satisfied with its response to GWA and I have heard comments that MPI doesn’t listen and doesn’t understand the seriousness of what is going on.”
The NZ Wood website says there are about 30,000ha of eucalyptus forests, mainly in the central North Island but also in central Otago and Northland.
Forest owners signed a Government Industry Agreement (GIA) on biosecurity last November, the sixth such GIA to be signed.
Industry representatives were also required to sign confidentiality deeds, backed by legal sanctions.
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