Find-A-Pest is an app that provides users with simple options to report potential insect and fungal pests of plants, pest weeds, and a range of other animal pests. Find-A-Pest is a great opportunity to participate in the Ko Tātou, This Is Us movement of all New Zealanders contributing to biosecurity. With the click of a camera button, it is easy to make an observation and submit for review by specialists. It is easy to use with observations made simply by clicking the camera button or via one of the factsheets.
If your observation is considered to be a potential biosecurity threat then it may be forwarded to Biosecurity New Zealand who will, if necessary, follow up for more information if they feel it is necessary.
Recently a user found a large weevil in their shopping box from Pak N Sav and submitted it to Find-A-Pest. The experts were sure it was a New Zealand native but given it was such an odd place for it to show up, they sent it through to Biosecurity New Zealand who confirmed it was indeed the large native weevil.
The team at Find-A-Pest are continuing with their active industry engagement and training this year and will also be rolling out some exciting updates including integrating the AI image recognition service from iNaturalist. Once in place, when an observation is made, users will be provided with an initial suggestion as to what the image could be.