The Marlborough District Council’s Environment and Planning committee heard about the incursion in south Marlborough during an update on the invasive exotic pest on Thursday.

South Marlborough Restoration Trust chairperson Johnny Oswald told the committee the trust’s wilding pine control team had discovered a patch of wilding trees about 3km from the as-yet uninfected Inland Kaikōura Range.

The nearest conifers were 25km to 30km away in the Branch-Leatham, so the seeds had travelled quite a distance, he said.

The trust’s 10-year plan said Marlborough needed at least $10m per year for conifer control, far more than it currently had, Oswald said.

“If we don’t do this, the cost to the country is far, far greater than that.

“You can kiss goodbye to the wine industry for a start. There just simply won’t be the water coming down the river," Oswald said.

“I think that we can do this, and that it needs a lot of work and a lot of money, but we're certainly not giving up.”

Oswald had taken the opportunity to speak at a presentation from council staff members about the National Wilding Conifer Control Programme.

The council’s senior biosecurity officer, Rob Simons, said the invasion of wilding pines in river catchments could lead to severe water shortages.

“Our catchments here actually supply the main water aquifer,” Simons said.

“So ultimately there’ll be no water for irrigation [or] drinking water.

“Not to mention the fact that [the] trees also impact or increase the risk of wildfires.”

Wilding pines had infected more than 2 million hectares around New Zealand, despite pest control efforts, Simons said.

If left unchecked the trees would cover a quarter of the country in 30 years.

While $150 million of government funding had gone towards the national response to wilding pines since 2016, the funding was halved in 2024 from a baseline of $20m per year to $10m.

Rangitahi Molesworth Reserve received about $2.3m towards wilding pine control this year, which was about 90% of Marlborough’s $2.6m wilding pine budget.

That budget was funded from the International Visitor Levy ($1.1m) the National Wilding Conifer Control Programme ($1.1m), and the rest from the council and the Department of Conservation.

Simons said the cut to national funding had severely hampered the response in Marlborough, and they were now losing ground.

“Maintenance work that should have been carried out hasn’t been able to be carried out.”

Similar alarms had been raised in other regions, with Environment Southland saying they too were “going backwards” in their fight against the pines.

Simons said that Molesworth Station, New Zealand’s largest farm and a major biodiversity hub, would need at least $5.5m per year just to maintain the progress already made.

“And probably after that, another $5 million per year to put the programme back on track.”

Without more funding, pines could soon cover between 600,000ha and 800,000ha of south Marlborough, Kaikōura and North Canterbury, Simons said.

Councillor John Hyndman said the spreading pines were a “looming catastrophe”.

“Southern Marlborough is going to turn into a pine forest, an impenetrable pine forest. I don't think there's anything we’re doing at the moment to stop that,” Hyndman said.

Councillor Gerald Hope said council did not have the resources to fund the response without Government funding.

“It has got to be elevated up central government,” Hope said.

“I just find that frustrating, because here we [are] as a unitary authority, with a massive area to cover, [and] a huge national responsibility to deal with an invasive crop.

“And we’re stuck between a rock and a very large crop of trees that we can't actually deal with.”

Hope told mayor Nadine Taylor they had no choice but to lobby the Government for more money.

Taylor suggested calculating the full economic impact to Marlborough if the trees were not stopped.

“We need to understand their long-term impact in order to bring leverage, I think, to the rationale for the Government [to be] investing in this right now.”

Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard’s office was approached for comment.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.