A pre-harvest bust by police from the organised crime squad recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars of cannabis plants in Western Southland, Te Anau and the Queenstown-Lakes district.

A search team in an air force helicopter, with officers from Dunedin and Queenstown, spent two days hunting for plants in Queenstown, Glenorchy, Arrowtown, Te Anau, and Western Southland.

Detective Senior Sergeant Malcolm Inglis, of the southern district organised crime squad, said the operation on Sunday and Monday made a dint in the commercial cannabis market associated with criminal gangs.

No arrests were made but the operation was continuing, Mr Inglis said.

Aerial search teams were winched onto the ground to search suspect plots.

Officers were careful to watch for cyanide and booby traps, although trapping was more common in the North Island, Mr Inglis said.

Several hundred plants were recovered, each with a street value of $500 to $1000.

The estimated value of plants recovered was hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said. "We recovered several hundred plants from that area; various numbers.

"The largest was about 30 plants. We tend not to get the big commercial grows because they're easier to find.

"They're definitely trying to put them among other vegetation. It's a matter of picking them out.

"The other concern is in the 70s or 80s the THC [the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol] was 5 to 10 per cent. It's now 30 to 40 per cent."

All the crops were outdoors, including one of more than 30 plants near Arthurs Point, between Queenstown and Arrowtown.

The aim of the operation was to stop the drug being harvested and distributed in the Queenstown-Lakes area.Occasionally, cannabis grown in the district was trafficked and sold elsewhere, including Christchurch.

Mr Inglis said tips from the public helped police searches in a sparsely populated, remote region of New Zealand.

The southern district was a large area and it was difficult to cover in its entirety, he said.