\u201cThis is urgent; we must act now with a huge knock-down, not a band-aid approach,\u201d Ward said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a wise use of the reserve funds \u2013 a dollar spent now is $10 saved later on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow councillor Peter Scott said local knowledge and co-ordination were vital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know two people who recently shot 200 wallabies over two days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a pest, and it\u2019s destructive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also a huge area we\u2019re dealing with, so we need to work with the community to find a local solution for a local problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott said he was pleased with the council\u2019s support, which he believed would benefit the whole region \u2013 and the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf left unchecked, wallaby spread would have serious consequences for biodiversity, productive land, and neighbouring regions.<\/p>\n
\u201cActing now enables us to protect both local communities and the substantial public investment already made.\u201d<\/p>\n
The investment will fund a co-ordinated package of work across the containment area, including new exclusion fencing, expanded aerial and ground control, maintenance operations, and enhanced monitoring and landowner engagement.<\/p>\n
The council\u2019s Pest Management Reserve has a target balance of $1m and allows surplus funds to be reinvested into urgent pest management activity without the need to increase rates.<\/p>\n
The work also complements central government investment through the Tipu M\u0101toro National Wallaby Eradication Programme, under which nearly $14m has already been invested in Canterbury.<\/p>\n
The council will receive progress updates on delivery at the end of each financial year.<\/p>\n
Longer\u2011term funding options for wallaby management, including targeted rates, will be considered through the Long\u2011Term Plan 2027\u201337.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Supplied by Environment Canterbury<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is urgent; we must act now with a huge knock-down, not a band-aid approach,\u201d Ward said. \u201cThis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[45859,9092,11231,8126,10043,145241,10474,5205,13574,15124,71,738,129,1044,1132,22387,111,139,1536,69,1523,19028,5914,4990,10665,147,24352,35108,34432,41229,406,102,1530],"class_list":["post-394636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-45859","tag-against","tag-boost","tag-canterbury","tag-canterburys","tag-containment","tag-control","tag-council","tag-efforts","tag-fight","tag-from","tag-funding","tag-gaining","tag-management","tag-million","tag-momentum","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-pest","tag-regional","tag-releasing","tag-reserve","tag-science","tag-secure","tag-spread","tag-wallabies","tag-wallaby","tag-wildlife","tag-with","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}