ABSTRACT
This latter study showed that the total economic cost of weeds and pest animals to New Zealand, including both direct control costs and production losses with multipliers, but excluding an estimate of cost to public conservation land, was NZ$3424 million per year. (Note: All ¢gures in this chapter are for 2008 unless otherwise stated.) This ¢gure represents about 1.93% of the gross domestic product (GDP). These ¢gures do not distinguish between all phyla such as viruses and fungi, but at least the data for plants and animals are presented in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) study.6 These latter data have enabled us to be more precise about the costs of weeds alone, so wherever appropriate we have substituted them for our ¢rst analysis.5
