Environment Southland's biosecurity department undertakes the following activities:

Bovine Tb Vector Management. Environment Southland has been an active partner in the national programme to eliminate bovine Tb since 1989. It has formal agreements with the Animal Health Board which operates the National Pest Management Strategy for Bovine Tb. Under this arrangement the Council manages the vector control programme and contributes a local funding share of approximately 10% for the programme in the region from rates.

Biosecurity staff are responsible for designing and implementing the vector control programmes which target wild animals which can carry and spread Tb to domestic cattle and deer. This is done in consultation with the the Animal Health Board, the Disease Management contractor and the farming stakeholders represented on the Regoinal Animal Health Committee.

The vector management programme currently covers approximately 1million hectares of land in Southland and aims to reduce possum populations to very low levels and hold them down until the Tb is eliminated. Ferrets are controlled on a selective basis depending on disease risk and some other species, like feral pigs and deer are sampled from time to time to determine whether disease is present.

All the pest control work in the programme is tendered out to independent contractors. The possum control is conducted using performance based contracts where formal monitoring is carried out to determine whether the target control levels have been achieved.

Under the present national pest management strategy it is intended to achieve ‘Tb Free status’ in Southland by 2011.

Pest Plant and Animal Eradication and Control Programmes are run to provide advice and education to the public. Staff also respond to complaints, perform inspections and compliance, promote animal and plant pest control methods, and perform pest species surveillance and monitoring.