This month, Auckland Council's Natural Environment Delivery Team will be undertaking aerial survey work for wallaby using a helicopter equipped with thermal imaging capability in an area from North Orewa to Cowan Bay Road and inland to Puhoi.

This work will take place on days with suitable fine weather between the 7th and 30th of June 2021. This aerial survey will not involve any control work such as shooting from the helicopter. The helicopter will also not operate below 300 metres, and to minimise disturbance it will avoid dwellings and livestock.

Within the last five years there have been four reported sightings of wallabies by members of the public in this area. All were investigated, including with the use of a certified wallaby detection dog. Two of these were ruled out as definitely not wallaby, but two had a lower level of confidence of wallaby absence indicated by the dog.

This survey will help confirm or otherwise any individual wallaby or low-level wallaby population in the area as we do not want this pest animal establishing on the Auckland’s mainland. These objectives are outlined in Auckland’s Regional Pest Management Plan.

Introduced from Australia in the 1870s, wallabies are common in parts of South Canterbury, Otago and Bay of Plenty but their reach is growing. They have been seen in fresh territories in Auckland, Northland, Hawke's Bay, Waikato, Gisborne, Wellington, Marlborough, Southland, and the West Coast. 

According to the Ministry of Primary Industries, left unchecked, wallabies could spread across one third of New Zealand over the next 50 years.

Wallabies can:

• damage native forests and tussocks
• compete for feed with sheep, cattle, and other livestock
• damage crops, young trees, and fences
• increase the risk of erosion.

The cost of this operation is $17,000, covering 9000 hectares, so that works out to be just under $1.90 per hectare. To put this in perspective, in 2016, Otago Regional Council were spending $100,000 annually on wallaby control trying to prevent them moving across the ranges from Canterbury into Otago and are losing the battle. Investing early in the infestation curve of a species like wallaby is futureproofing costly spend on control in later years.