Show Notes
The PSA outbreak changed the trajectory of Aotearoa New Zealand’s kiwifruit industry and revealed just how tightly our “three bios” are linked. In this episode, we revisit one of the country’s most significant biological events to unpack how biosecurity, biodiversity, and bioprotection collide in real time.
Using PSA as our lens, we trace the story from the first signs of incursion through to industry-wide impact, rapid scientific response, community collaboration, and the innovations that helped growers rebuild. Along the way, the team also touches on recent hornet scares and what they reveal about how quickly biological threats can escalate.
This episode shows that the three bios are not policy terms, but interconnected systems that shape the health of our landscapes, the resilience of our industries, and the futures of the communities that depend on them.
Revisiting PSA is not just looking back at a crisis. It is understanding a blueprint for how Aotearoa New Zealand can learn, adapt, and strengthen resilience as new threats emerge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Under the Lens
No one has said we don't need biosecurity. There are ways to do this. There are people with knowledge, there are communities who care, and there are ways to secure and protect the unique landscapes of Aotearoa.
Tame Malcolm (Te Arawa: Ngāti Tarāwhai, Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Ngararanui, Ngāti Whakaue) has spent his career getting people excited about the bush, the birds, and the ecosystems that make Aotearoa unique. Because as he puts it, no one protects what they don't know. In this episode the General Manager of Te Arawa Lakes Trust explores what biosecurity could look like if we wiped the slate clean and started from something uniquely ours, grounded in Aotearoa's own identity, culture, and knowledge.
Biology has changed. The amount of biological data we can now collect has exploded, from automated sensors at our borders to genomic data tracking where pests come from. But are we maximising the opportunities to gather insight that this data could offer?
Biosecurity is often thought of as systems and agencies. But communities, people, and places are also doing the long term work, often with little resourcing and even less say in how it gets done.
Season two of Under the Lens is here, and we are starting somewhere unexpected. Fellow co-hosts Amanda and Peter turn the lens on Nick Waipara, drawing on his 25 years in biosecurity to ask what a reimagined system would actually look like.