The brown marmorated stink bug incursion that occurred in early 2026 has now been safely brought under control.
The brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys) is an agricultural pest found in Asia, which has invaded the US and has been on New Zealand’s biosecurity threat list for well over a decade. If it becomes established in New Zealand, fruit crops would be under threat.
In February 2026, an adult male brown marmorated stink bug was found in a trap close to Auckland’s port. It could have arrived in a shipping container or in travellers’ luggage.
Dr Scott Sinclair, manager of the Biosecurity New Zealand operational readiness team confirmed that the response to the incursion had been swift, and more traps had been placed in nearby areas. So far, no other stink bugs have been detected.
Authorities will continue to be on heightened alert as the bugs will be spending the next few months looking for places to overwinter, including inside shipping containers. Pest managers should be able to identify the marmorated stink bug to help ensure New Zealand remains free of this invasive pest.
At the same time, work is ongoing in developing a biological defence strategy against the brown marmorated stink bug. Trissolcus japonicus, the samurai wasp, is a natural enemy of the stink bug, laying its eggs inside the stink bug eggs, where it feeds on the developing stink bug larva. One of the key challenges is to find a way to breed these parasitoid wasps without the need for stink bug eggs, so that sufficient numbers of wasps could be raised rapidly for release should the marmorated stink bug population start to develop in New Zealand.
