Find-A-Pest is all about helping you to keep your corner of New Zealand protected from new pests and weeds. It lets you take a photo and identify any unusual species you find. It you think it might be a new pest, don't hesitate to click the blue camera icon in the app and make an observation. If you have found an important pest, we'll pass on the relevant agency and let you know.

Find-A-Pest is also filled with fact sheets about the most important new and nearby pests that you should be keeping an eye out for.

Head on over to our the How to use the app page for more information about using the app.

If you encounter problems or have any other questions, let us know what's going on using the form on the Contact Us page

iNaturalist NZ - Mātaki Taiao is an engine for identifying any species anywhere. iNaturalist NZ has been operating in New Zealand since 2012 as New Zealand's member of the global iNaturalist Network, operated by the California Academy of Science and the US National Geographic.

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By using an iNaturalist NZ account for Find-A-Pest, it means that we can seamlessly pass your observations to iNaturalist NZ for identification by the citizen science community and you get feedback directly to your Find-A-Pest app.

Your iNaturalist profile name will be displayed with your observations and any comments you make about your observation in the Find-A-Pest project page on iNaturalist.

If you make an observation of an important pest, it's essential that we, and agencies like Biosecurity New Zealand, can get hold of you straight away if we need more details from you. It's for this reason and this reason only that we require your phone number. We will keep your number safe and not pass it on to anyone except approved New Zealand biosecurity agencies.

We request access to either your phone’s location, location from your photo’s metadata or for you to input an address when you send in an observation of a potential pest so that we can know when the pest is located the pest can either be monitored or managed. We need your help to know where pests are so that we can be more effective at managing pests which threaten our environment and primary industries.

Yes! You can decide if you need to publicly obscure all of your observations to 10 km. By default this is off as you can also make this decision for each observation separately before submitting.

The Find-A-Pest app is available on phones that are registered as in New Zealand in your app store. This is to ensure that we are only getting reports of pests that have been found in New Zealand.

Its quick and simple to change your app store location. See the step by step instructions in the following questions.

1. On your Android device, open the Google Play Store app .

2. At the top right, tap the profile icon.

3. Tap Settings General Account and device preferences Country and profiles.

4. Tap the country where you want to add an account.

5. Follow the on-screen instructions to add a payment method for that country.

Tip: Your profile can take up to 48 hours to update.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap your name, then tap Media & Purchases.

3. Tap View Account. You might be asked to sign in.

4. Tap Country/Region.

5. Tap Change Country or Region.

6. Tap your new country or region, then review the Terms & Conditions.

7. Tap Agree in the top right-hand corner, then tap Agree again to confirm.

8. Select a payment method and enter your new payment information and billing address, then tap Next. You must enter a valid payment method for your new country or region.*

You can also change the country online:

1. Sign in to appleid.apple.comappleid.apple.com.

2. Tap or click Personal Information.

3. Tap or click Country/Region.

4. Follow the onscreen instructions. You must enter a valid payment method for your new country or region.*

Note: you must have cancelled any existing subscriptions prior to changing your app store country. If you are part of a Family Sharing group, you may not be able ot change your country until you leave the family sharing group.

You can find more information at https://support.apple.com/en-nz/HT201389

Pests can sometimes be tricky to photograph well. Check out our photography guide for some tips and tricks

Absolutely. A lot of remote areas of New Zealand have no mobile coverage and Find-A-Pest is designed to work everywhere. If you're offline, all the observations you make will be queued in the app. Next time you're on wi-fi or data and have the Find-A-Pest app open, your queued observations will upload to the Find-A-Pest server for identification.

If you're confident that you've found a pest species new to New Zealand, please don't hesitate to call Biosecurity New Zealand free at 0800 80 99 66.

Any pest you find you can submit to Find-A-Pest through the app. We'll identify it and pass your observation on to the relevant agencies as necessary and give you feedback through the app about your observation.

Find-A-Pest is a collaborative project and observations are ID'd by experts from various industries, councils and DOC. We aim to respond to observations within 1 working day.

Updates to your observation can be found in the activity tab on your app. Observations that are reported using the "report this pest" button in a fact sheet that is a species already in New Zealand will go straight onto the Find-A-Pest project page on iNaturalist. These observations may be updated by the citizen science community on iNaturalist. You will get alerts on any updates to the species name in the activity tab on your app.

Suspected new to New Zealand species will be forwarded to Biosecurity NZ and they will call you regarding your observation within 24-48 hours.

Find-A-Pest is a team effort. It operates from the University of Canterbury and is a collaborative effort between many organisations including:

Lincoln University

Biosecurity New Zealand

All Regional Councils

Department of Conservation

Te Tira Whakamataki

New Zealand Forest Owners Association

Kiwifruit Vine Health

Horticulture New Zealand

NZ Wine Growers

Scion

Summerfruit NZ

Apples & Pears NZ

Onions NZ

iNaturalist NZ

Biological Heritage National Science Challenge

If you would like free resources to help support the promotion of pest awareness, biosecurity and Find-A-Pest, please contact us at help@findapest.nz

If you're already one of our industry partners, you have access to our backroom where there's more promotional materials, including things that you can customise. Contact us to help get you set up if needed.

You can easily sign out of your Find-A-Pest app from the menu bar. You can also delete the app from your phone, as you would usually delete an app.

To fully remove your account, you need to go to inaturalist.nz. Once signed into iNaturalist, go to your account settings (click on your profile image in the top right corner). In the settings menu, select Account, the select Delete your account. This will remove all your data and images from iNaturalist.

Please note that observations sent via the Find-A-Pest app remain within the Find-A-Pest database for pest monitoring and reporting purposes as in the terms and conditions of using Find-A-Pest. If you have any concerns or issues, please contact us help@findapest.nz

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