State Biosecurity Response Centre unveiled in Canning Vale as WA steps up battle against shot-hole borer

The State Government has unveiled a State Biosecurity Response Centre, spending $97.3 million to fast-track the facility in a bid to tackle the invasive shot-hole borer and other threats to nature. Agriculture Minister Jackie Jarvis defended the handling of the outbreak on Saturday as she unveiled the new headquarters in Canning Vale. The polyphagous shot-hole borer was first detected in WA in 2021. The new facility will house up to 300 Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s biosecurity staff. The critical shot-hole borer and Queensland fruit fly response teams will be among the first to operate from the new centre in coming weeks, with other teams to follow in stages throughout 2025. The four-hectare site includes 6000sqm of warehousing and laboratories will be built at the facility next year. The headquarters was first proposed to be in Murdoch, but Ms Jarvis announced in August the State Government would spend an extra $83m to fast-track the Biosecurity Response Centre at a different location. “Whilst it would have been great to be co-located with the scientists at Murdoch University, it became clear that the Murdoch facility was not going to be large enough to deal with the increasing biosecurity threats that Australia is facing,” she said on Saturday. The opening of the centre comes as the department continues to tackle the shot-hole borer, which has infested more than 6000 trees across Perth, including about 200 in Hyde Park and more than 240 in Kings Park. There is no pesticide to stop the beetle and no way of killing them once they have infected a tree. The WA Local Government Association said the State Government’s strategy to stop the beetle had failed to meet “the scale of the challenge”. Ms Jarvis said the current strategy was endorsed by all of Australia’s top plant health specialists. “We are currently on an eradication plan. That may change into the future but at this stage we are working on the best advice we have,” she said. “Now, it is true that in some individual trees, you can just remove a limb or two and remove the borer. “What we know, however, is the borer just moves to the tree next door or another tree so whilst you can do a lot of work to protect an individual tree, what we need to do is make sure that we work on an eradication plan. “If it is no longer technically feasible to eradicate, then we will cross that bridge when it comes to it.” The department’s chief plant biosecurity officer, Vincent Lanoiselet, said the shot-hole borer still remained within the quarantine zone, which covers the entire metropolitan area. “We had to extend the quarantine area back in September following detection that we were getting very close to the edges of the quarantine area and on the outer boundaries,” he said. “That’s why we extended the quarantine area to the whole Perth metropolitan area but at this stage we haven’t detected any borer outside of that quarantine area, which is great news.” Perth’s urban tree canopy is already the worst of all major capitals and last summer’s heat created visible stress and even death for trees across the south-west of the State. Satellite observations reported by University of WA researchers to late September showed 45 per cent of all vegetation was in worse health in autumn this year than in a “normal” autumn period.