Master of Bioprotection

Summary

Help secure native ecosystems throughout New Zealand and the world.

About this programme

New Zealand is facing a host of challenges from invasive pests. There is an urgent need for trained experts with the skills to strengthen our bioprotection and conserve our natural spaces.

You'll learn how to design, implement and monitor pest management systems with a scientific grounding to ensure the safety of our ecosystems.

You'll specialise in plant or vertebrate pest management, with the opportunity to spend a semester on a research placement conducting real world work.

Key features

• Learn how to design and implement environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable management programmes in response to specific pest problems.
• Understand how to monitor the outcomes of pest management strategies, measuring impacts and pinpointing any developing physiological and behavioural resistance to control tools.
• Gain in-depth understanding of adaptive management, and learn how to effectively share new research findings to influence current practice.
• Work alongside industry or gain a valuable placement in a relevant organisation.

Career opportunities

You’ll be well positioned for a role in the primary production sector, with a government organisation involved with pest control and border safety, or as an agricultural consultant advising on pest control and plant protection.

Graduate Attributes

Graduate Attributes refer to the knowledge, skills, and values that you gain from completing your qualification. These high-level qualities will prepare you for career success, further study or research and making a valuable contribution to society in your chosen field.

Knowledge

• Describe the scientific, political and economic factors that influence the management of vertebrate pest species in New Zealand and internationally.
• Explain and use basic biometric analysis techniques.
• Understand the ecological theory underpinning wildlife management and conservation.
• Describe the biology and ecology of specified plant disease and pest organisms and identify appropriate and acceptable management options.
• Understand the strategic, tactical and logistical issues that wildlife managers need to address before instigating any vertebrate pest management action.
• Understand how to use GIS analysis to solve ecological problems at a landscape scale.

Skills

• Communicate the results of literature reviews (using library databases) and research projects clearly and concisely in various written and oral forms.
• Identify and apply GIS spatial analysis techniques to both raster and vector models.
• Incorporate GPS and Remote Sensing data appropriately into GIS analyses using the ArcGis software suite.
• Develop management plans for plant pests that integrate various control methods into programmes suitable for both host and pest/disease development phases.

Values

• Understand the philosophy and ethics of science research and communication.
• Understand how existing plant-pest control programmes can continue to meet the needs of growers in a sustainable way.