NSW Farmers warns funding to fight off biosecurity threats must continue to be a top priority, as a new report exposes the true cost of the state’s ballooning pests and weeds problem.
The Invasive Species Management Review released by the NSW Government this week found the cost of invasive species in NSW skyrocketed to $1.9 billion in the 2022-23 financial year.
NSW Farmers Conservation and Resource Management Committee Member Bronwyn Petrie called for a coordinated and concerted effort to ramp up biosecurity adding pigs the size of footy players are running rampant across the state, weeds are spreading like wildfire and wild dogs are bleeding through our borders.
Ms Petrie says in the blink of an eye, they’ve gone from a multi-million-dollar dilemma to a multi-billion-dollar one, and farmers can only spend so much more of their own time and money trying to control these species before they can no longer front up to produce our food and fibre.
She says they need a cross-tenure, cross-landscape approach to managing weeds and pests that’s more intensive and enforceable than anything they currently have in place and called for real action, plans and progress on protecting the state, now.
