T2 | Bioprotection Futures

Most weed and pest management in Aotearoa New Zealand focus on addressing individual invasive species, rather than the environmental conditions that trigger invasiveness. This project aims to shed light on avenues—both existing and new—that enable landscape-scale bioprotection approaches in policy and practice.

This doctoral research by Jazmynn Hodder-Swain examines existing processes of community inclusion in the pest management system in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as how communities are generating other contexts for inclusion outside of the system.

We are providing much-needed systematic analysis of the biosecurity system – how it has developed over time, how it is supposed to work, and how it works in practice.

The saying goes that ‘those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it’. This project looks back over one hundred years to the emergence of pests and weeds, and early efforts to control them, in Horomaka Banks Peninsula. Studying how pests and weeds were managed in the past illuminates the foundations of our current management system – including its successes and failures.