The New Zealand Biosecurity Institutes annual conference will be held in the Rydges Hotel from today until Friday.
President Craig Davey said the theme was "Remarkable Changes".
"This recognises both the remarkable location of Queenstown, and that the seminar was last held there 30 years ago, under the auspices of the Institute of Noxious Plants Officers," he said.
The event would take a retrospective look at pest management, as well as discuss the biosecurity issues of the coming 30 years.
The conference will feature biosecurity issues including rabbits, didymo, wilding trees, and pest eradications from islands.
Today's sessions include "From Rabbit Boards to fully-integrated Biosecurity - are we halfway on the journey?" by keynote speaker John Hellstrom, of the former Rabbit Biocontrol Advisory Group.
Otago Regional Council chief executive Graeme Martin will give a regional perspective of pest management since 1979 and Graeme Gale, of Helicopters Otago, will speak on the role of helicopters in pest management.
Other sessions include aquatic weeds, willow management, wilding pines and didymo.
Mt Aspiring Station owner John Aspinall will give a talk on high-country management issues and the role of tenure review tomorrow before field trips in the afternoon.
Field trips include a high-country weed walk in Sawpit Gully, wild animal control in Glenorchy, claybird shooting and an Earnslaw cruise to Walter Peak Station.
Participants can choose to take a post-conference field trip from Friday to Sunday exploring pest issues through Otago and Southland.
It will visit Te Anau via Kingston and Mossburn with stops at the Mararoa River to look at didymo at some of the first recorded sites in New Zealand.
There will also be an opportunity to view the Mararoa Restoration project, where large areas of crack willow, gorse and broom have been cleared from the riverbed.
The trip will then go to Five Rivers, up Mid Dome and then to Cromwell via the Nevis Valley and on to Clyde and Alexandra via the Hawkesburn road.
