Pests, diseases and weeds
Part of looking after your forest involves protecting it from pests, diseases and weeds. Find out how to check your forest for these threats, how to manage them and where to get help.
Forest health checks
By regularly inspecting your forest, you can see what’s normal and when a pest or disease might be affecting it. How you inspect it depends on how much forestry experience you have and the size of the forest. Below are some options.
Monitoring your forest
There are lots of ways to monitor your forest. Some of these include:
- Condition monitoring – checking the average condition of your forest. This is useful for seeing patterns over time.
- Photo points – taking photos in the same place, regularly. These are useful for visually tracking changes.
- Surveying specific pests or diseases – a useful way to check levels of one specific condition in your forest. You'll need to know what symptoms or signs you're looking for.
- Symptom assessments – intensive inspection of all trees in a defined area for signs of damage. Take recordings by section of tree (overall form, branches, buds and foliage, roots and collars, logs and stumps, leaders and stem).
Keep detailed notes of your inspections. Include times, dates, weather conditions and GPS coordinates.
Learn about some of the pests, weeds and diseases you might see in New Zealand’s forests.
Preventing and controlling forest pests and diseases
The way you manage threats to your forest depends on the type of pest, disease or weed you're dealing with. For example, you may need traps for possums or fencing to keep deer out.
The forestry advisory team at the Ministry for Primary Industries can help you make decisions about the best way to manage threats in your forest.
Forest health checking guide
New Zealand Farm Forestry Association has a guide to help you assess the health of your forest.