NZ: Northland in voluntary Psa-V lockdown
Kiwifruit growers there are earnestly destroying abandoned orchards, which are likely to be hot beds of infection if Psa bacteria enters the region.
An agreement to co-fund the work is being negotiated between the Northland committee of the industry-funded Kiwifruit Vine Health and the Northland Regional Council's Environmental Management Committee, which last week agreed to contribute $6000 from its bio-security fund.
KVH branch chair Robbie Bell said the KVH committee had no legal standing, but was working with owners of abandoned orchards and was in urgent need of public assistance to identify any more sites that may need to be dealt with.
Don Mckenzie, NRC biosecurity senior programme manager, said untended orchards were "dense masses of tangled vines", difficult and costly to remove, which could host Psa and were also a potential source of the invasive wild kiwifruit.
He said that under a regional strategy to combat "wilding" kiwifruit, the NRC could do the work and register the costs as a lien on the property title if owners failed to comply with an order to do the work themselves, but he acknowledged the strategy was costly, subject to public hearings and appeals and likely to take more than a year.
Mr Bell said the industry had worked co-operatively to "virtually turn Northland into a closed shop".
"The harbour bridge is the border as far as we are concerned."
Source: www.northernadvocate.co.nz