The Animal Health Board has slaved away for years getting bovine TB contained, reduced, minimised in cow herds and they've achieved a huge amount.

Since 2009, it's managed to reduce the number of infected herds from 121 to 77, with only 14 in the North Island and 63 in the South Island, mainly on the West Coast where the amount of bush gives ‘vector' possums and other wildlife more space to hide out in.

They've now changed their strategy somewhat, with a new 15 year plan. They will still be trying to minimise the number of herds, but now they'll also be emphasising the wiping out of infected vector animals (mainly possums, but also some ferrets, feral pigs and wild deer) in some places.

The aim is to have 2.5 million hectares of Vector Risk Areas cleaned up by 2026. To date, they've eradicated TB from wildlife in about 270,000ha of New Zealand known to have harboured infected wildlife.

Of course it can't all happen at once, so they've focused on some strategic areas, one of which is a huge area of the central North Island – stretching roughly between Te Kuiti, Gisborne, Hastings and Wanganui – and divided it up into areas they've nominated for Eradication, others for TB Free Area Protection and the rest for Infected Herd Suppression.

When aiming for eradication, they want to prevent TB infected possums making contact with susceptible possums. So they need to thin the population overall to very low densities to reduce the likelihood of this happening – and keep up the pressure for about 10 years.

To achieve the results they want is going to take much time, people effort and funding. They need to secure a contractor base to deliver the Vector and Surveillance programme on time and to specification. They also have to develop long-term relationships with the relevant landowners and be able to reduce the vector risk areas.

Present funding sources include: the cattle slaughter levy, local government, DairyNZ, the deer industry and reactor proceeds.

The government has confirmed it will continue to provide dollar for dollar funding for vector control. Out of all this they have to fund vector and disease control, compensation, research, administration and communications, plus pay the people who do the work in the field.

But in the last two years, some of the regional councils have objected to providing their cut of the $6.6m Local Government share from their funding. Not only does the AHB not have a hope of collecting enough through their own efforts (which would also have a huge cost for doing it), but what some councillors don't seem to have realised, is that if that money isn't forthcoming, then the government dollar for dollar isn't either. The true value of the regional council contributions is therefore not $6.6m but $13.2m.

At a recent Wellington meeting, it was decided to form a working party, with representatives from Local Government and AHB, to come up with some ideas on future funding of the strategy.

Goodness knows know long that might take to get agreement, and in the meantime the tubercular possums will probably go on gallivanting around, spreading the bad times and undoing the hard work that has already been done.