Does New Zealand have termites, and is that what you have found?

The termites that live here, and the ones that keep arriving

Three termite species are native here, the drywood Kalotermes brouni and the wetwood Stolotermes ruficeps and S. inopinus, and three Australian species that have settled here, Kalotermes banksiae, Glyptotermes brevicornis and Porotermes adamsoni. Scion's review of exotic termites does not rate any of the settled three as an economically important pest. The species that damage buildings overseas have arrived several times, but none is established.

The native drywood termite lives throughout the country in dead, sound wood: standing dead trees, logs, fence posts, poles, untreated building timber, and sometimes the heartwood of living pines, which it reaches through dead branch stubs. The wetwood termites need moist, partly rotten wood, and their colonies are small, usually between 50 and 250 insects and occasionally around 3,000. Of the settled Australians, K. banksiae keeps to driftwood and logs on sandy coasts, and G. brevicornis was first recorded in Auckland in 1977.

The arrivals are why every report is taken seriously. Australian subterranean termites are thought to have come in with imported poles, railway sleepers and timber packaging, and they were found and eradicated at a series of Auckland sites, from Coatesville in 2007 to Omaha in 2014. The West Indian drywood termite was found in imported wooden items in a Kapiti Coast house in 2011 and, in 2025, in the wooden fittings of a yacht at an Auckland marina. Scion's term for the status of both is "absent: eradicated".

Holes, dust and pellets: termite or borer damage?

Borer leaves small round or oval exit holes across the surface, one to two millimetres for the common house borer, and gritty dust below them. The native drywood termite leaves the surface almost intact, with only a few small openings, and pushes out hard, separate pellets that are elongated, rounded at both ends and six-sided in cross-section. Wetwood termites work in wood that is already soft and wet, which most people would call rot first.

Inside the timber the patterns differ too. Drywood termites eat out the softer earlywood and leave the harder latewood as thin parallel walls, so a split board shows long galleries running with the grain. Scion notes that the dry conditions that suit them in buildings also suit house borer and two-toothed longhorn larvae, so a damaged piece can hold more than one culprit. We have laid out borer or termites, compared side by side, sign by sign.

If it might be an exotic termite: leave it, photograph it, call MPI

If you suspect exotic termites, do not spray them, do not disturb them, and do not move or throw out the timber or furniture. Photograph what you can see, note exactly where it is, and call MPI's Exotic Pest and Disease Hotline on 0800 80 99 66, or report it online at report.mpi.govt.nz. Some exotic termites are notifiable organisms under the Biosecurity Act 1993, so reporting a suspected one is a legal duty, not a courtesy.

The Biosecurity (Notifiable Organisms) Order 2016 names three termites: the Australian subterranean termite, the Formosan subterranean termite and the West Indian drywood termite. Others, among them the western drywood termite, Incisitermes minor, which MPI reports finding on boats arriving from overseas, are dealt with through MPI's responses. Leaving them alone matters, because spraying or breaking timber open can scatter a colony, and a response works only if every part of the infestation is found.

Drywood termites need particular care, since the exotic ones look much like our native species and Scion separates them by the heads and jaws of the soldiers. That is why any drywood termite activity in building timber, imported furniture or boat timber goes to MPI first, and we only work on it once it has been confirmed as a native species. What a response involves for a particular property, and whether anything falls to the owner, is for MPI to explain.

Can a termite hurt you?

Hardly at all. Termites feed on wood, not on people, and the only one likely to nip is a soldier that has been picked up, a bite that extension entomologists at the University of Georgia describe as neither painful nor dangerous. The harm termites do is to timber, and in New Zealand even that is usually confined to dead or damp wood outdoors.

Should you want to know what you have found, a clear photograph of the insect, the pellets or the damage is usually enough for us to tell a termite from an ant or borer, and to say whether MPI needs to hear about it first.