Incursion Response

New Zealand maintains a robust surveillance and monitoring system to ensure that if a pest organism does enter the country, it is rapidly located and identified.

Scion provides the science and diagnostic capabilities that underpin this important first line of defence.

In the unfortunate event that unwanted organism enters the country, we offer expertise to support the many challenging management decisions that arise.

Our forest health specialists have supported a number of successful eradication campaigns in New Zealand, including painted apple moth, white spotted tussock moth, Asian gypsy moth and fall webworm.

Our key capabilities:

  • Diagnostic service
  • Surveillance and monitoring
  • Economic and environmental impact assessments
  • Host testing
  • Treatment technologies

Diagnostic service

A specialised diagnostic service enables us to identify potential new pests and diseases that arrive in imported materials. Newly-developed molecular techniques apply DNA-based technology for the rapid diagnosis of organisms that are often hard to identify by traditional means.

Surveillance and monitoring

Surveillance methods are being improved through specialised technologies, including remote sensing.

Economic and environmental impact assessments

By predicting the likely spread and behaviour of organisms in the New Zealand environment, we can estimate the economic and environmental impact of pest incursions.

Host testing

By testing organism/hosts relationships in quarantine, we can determine what plant species are most at risk from pest incursions

Treatment technologies

Our expertise in spray application technology has underpinned a number of successful eradication campaigns in New Zealand.

A factor in this success was the use of SpraySafe Manager (SSM), a risk assessment tool developed by Scion that determines the likely fate of spray material released from an aircraft. SSM predicts where herbicide spray is likely to land in any given operation, and what the biological consequences of the herbicide will be. As such, this decision support system can help operational managers and pilots to develop best practices for aerial spraying.

Contact : Lindsay Bulman