A pest incursion toolkit for the urban battlefield

There is no dispute that having a robust biosecurity system is vital for New Zealand’s economic, social and cultural wellbeing. There are huge risks to New Zealand’s forest conservation estate and primary production sectors from exotic plant pests (insects and pathogens), and the scale of these biosecurity threats is escalating alongside the expansion of New Zealand’s trade and tourism industries. A growing challenge for agencies involved in biosecurity and pest management is to manage two-way risk communication and engagement strategies that account for community perspectives. Recent research in this area highlights that agencies must step beyond a narrow operational focus to engage more meaningfully with stakeholders and enter into dialogue based on participation, trust and understanding. Although these needs are known, there are a lack of methodologies and tools to undertake this engagement and support agencies in reflecting and changing their practices. Protecting New Zealand’s primary sector from plant pests: a toolkit for the urban battlefield is a Scion lead MBIE programme that is looking at novel tools and improved control of urban incursions. Our teams work within this programme aims to understand the range of diverse urban communities and their expectations around pest eradication through the integration of social and cultural views of biosecurity. Our work includes developing rubrics within a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach with agencies, building skills and pathways to help agencies to assess and adapt their risk communication and engagement approaches – taking particular account of Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) – to aid future response processes. This presentation will outline the project, the social strand and issues around urban eradication, and the development of performance assessment-based methodologies that help us achieve our goals, and the challenges in building a research/agency partnership approach to their implementation