Dunedin’s deer and cattle officially TB-free

There are currently no infected cattle or deer herds in the Dunedin bovine tuberculosis management area.

Over the past year, OSPRI and their TBfree contractor, High Country Contracting, have made a huge amount of progress towards eradicating bovine TB from around Dunedin: The number of infected herds is down from nine to zero.

In the process of achieving this, High Country Contracting completed intensive possum control over 10,000 hectares, removing over 6500 possums from some challenging, scrubby terrain. This is a mammoth effort using 19,316 traps, bait stations and bait bags on 350 properties. All the work passed independent result monitoring with flying colours. 

The intensive possum control has brought infected herds down to zero but there is still a risk of TB in the possum population. Possums need to be kept to low numbers over multiple years to eradicate the disease. Possum control is underway in the northern part of the TB management area and will continue south in the next year to keep numbers low and remove any potential disease clusters.