Wasp eradication project back and better than ever

The Wasp Wipeout programme is expanding in the South Island, targeting a predator that inflicts huge damage on the environment and the economy.

Summer is around the corner and it’s buzzing with potential – the potential for wasps to make a nuisance of themselves again.

Stuff’s Wasp Wipeout is back and better than ever, gearing up to take out every barbecue’s worst nightmare.

Starting out as a local effort in the Nelson Tasman region in 2016, the wipeout has spread just like the invasive wasp species it targets.

This year the project is taking on most of the South Island, and will include harder-to-target paper wasps.

Department of Conservation Wasp Wipeout project lead Adam Riding was delighted that the programme now had a national coordinator, Darrell Haworth.

It was exciting to be expanding into Central Otago and new regions in the North Island.

Stuff, the Department of Conservation, the Tasman Environmental Trust and Conservation Volunteers New Zealand have combined forces to track wasp populations and at just the right time, usually mid-to-late summer depending on wasp activity and numbers, hit the great outdoors with bait.

The protein-based Vespex bait is carefully designed to target wasps with as little risk to other animals or insects as possible. The active ingredient, fipronil, is at a concentration of 0.1 per cent, a lower concentration than the same active ingredient found in common flea-treatments for cats and dogs.

To be safe, the bait stations are attached to trees in a way that makes them difficult for most animals to reach. Because the poison is effective against any insect that might find it, it is removed within eight days to minimise the chance of poisoning non-target insects. Bees don’t take the bait as they don’t eat protein.

A 2017 study found that in just four days Vespex reduced wasp numbers by 94 per cent.

New Zealand has some of the highest wasp densities in the world, with up to 40 nests per hectare of forest. Despite the effectiveness of Vespex, the poison needs to be re-administered every year, as a queen wasp can fly up to 70 kilometres, to find the perfect spot to build her nest and re-infect an area.

Wasps cost the New Zealand economy an estimated $130 million per year, mostly thanks to their destruction of beehives.

They have no natural predators in New Zealand and can devastate native insect populations.

Last year’s Wasp Wipeout raised over $80,000 towards clearing South Island forests. Keep an eye out on Neighbourly and Stuff for updates and ways to get involved as a Vespex volunteer or donor.

Wasps cost the New Zealand economy an estimated $130 million per year