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Little Giants - little fire ants (wasnannia auropunctata) : Vanuatu

Available Online

Simeon, Alain

Video of Little Fire Ant, Wasmania auropunctata, Regional Alian Invasive Species Project funded by Global Environmental Facility - Pacific Alliance for education of the problems they cause to the community; instructions on eradication by baiting of Little Fire Ants on Vanuatu described and recommendation of best investiment and management for alien invasive species is to have quarantine and biosecurity systems in place with trained personnel and resources to prevent the spread of alien invasive species coming into the country and spreading within the country. Acknowledgements to Global Environmental Facility - Pacific Alliance for Sustainability, United Nations Environment Program, SPREP, Vanuatu Department of Environment, Vanuatu Department of Biosecurity, Vanuatu Environmental Protection and Conservation Department, Vanuatu Agriculture Department, Vanuatu Forestry Department, Vanuatu Land Department, Live and Learn Education, Hawaii Ant Laboratory - Casper Vanderwounde, Talua Theological College, Vanuatu - Mango Station, Vanuatu - Solway Community, Vanuatu - Pepsi Area, Vanuatu - Lavusvatu community, Vanuatu - Freswater 1 area, Vanuatu - Hollen area, Vanuatu - No. 2 Lagoon area

Maximising conservation impact by prioritising islands for biosecurity

Available Online

Bambini, L.

Dawson, J.

Havery, S.

John, L.

Oppel, S.

Radford, E.

Varnham, K.

Invasive alien species are one of the primary threats to native biodiversity on islands worldwide, and their expansion continues due to global trade and travel. Preventing the arrival and establishment of highly successful invasive species through rigorous biosecurity is known to be more economic than the removal of these species once they have established. However, many islands around the world lack biosecurity regulations or practical measures and establishing biosecurity will require social and financial investments. Guiding these investments towards islands where native biodiversity is at highest risk from potential invasions is of strategic importance to maximise conservation benefit with limited resources. Here we implement an established prioritisation approach, previously used to identify which islands will have the greatest conservation gains from the eradication of invasive species, to identify which islands would benefit the most from establishing or improving biosecurity. We demonstrate this approach for 318 islands in the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories and Bermuda where we considered all threatened native terrestrial vertebrates that are vulnerable to the most harmful invasive vertebrates (black and brown rats, cats, small Indian mongoose, green iguana). The approach calculates the increase in conservation threat score resulting from anticipated negative effects of potential invaders on native biodiversity, and highlighted Sombrero (Anguilla) and Cayman Brac (Cayman Islands) as important islands where threatened reptile species would likely be eliminated if rats, feral cats or mongoose invaded. Feasibility and cost implications should now be investigated more closely on the highlighted islands. The prioritisation presented here can be expanded to more islands and more invasive/native taxa (herbivores, plants and invertebrates), but requires a classification of the severity of potential impacts between invasive and native species for which currently little information exists. Besides highlighting opportunities for biosecurity, this approach also highlights where knowledge gaps about population sizes of and threats to reptiles with restricted ranges exist.

House mice on islands: management and lessons from New Zealand

Island and Ocean Ecosystems, BRB

Available Online

Birmingham,C.

Broome, K.

Brown, D.

Brown, K.

Corson, P.

Cox, A.

Golding, C.

Griffiths, R.

Murphy, E.

The impacts of house mice (Mus musculus), one of four invasive rodent species in New Zealand, are only clearly revealed on islands and fenced sanctuaries without rats and other invasive predators which suppress mouse populations, influence their behaviour, and confound their impacts. When the sole invasive mammal on islands, mice can reach high densities and influence ecosystems in similar ways to rats. Eradicating mice from islands is not as difficult as previously thought, if best practice techniques developed and refined in New Zealand are applied in association with diligent planning and implementation. Adopting this best practice approach has resulted in successful eradication of mice from several islands in New Zealand and elsewhere including some of the largest ever targeted for mice; in multi-species eradications; and where mouse populations were still expanding after recent invasion. Prevention of mice reaching rodent-free islands remains an ongoing challenge as they are inveterate stowaways, potentially better swimmers than currently thought, and prolific breeders in predator-free habitat. However, emergent mouse populations can be detected with conventional surveillance tools and eradicated before becoming fully established if decisive action is taken early enough. The invasion and eventual eradication of mice on Maud Island provides a case study to illustrate New Zealand-based lessons around mouse biosecurity and eradication.

Biosecurity on St Helena Island a socially inclusive model for protecting small island nations from invasive species

Island and Ocean Ecosystems, BRB

Available Online

Balchin, J.R.

Duncan, D.G.

Key, G.E.

Stevens, N.

St. Helena Island, 122 km2 (47 sq. miles) is a UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic. It is a remote volcanic island situated in the sub-tropics 1,127 km (700 miles) from Ascension Island and 2,736 km (1,700 miles) from South Africa. Its resident population of ca. 4,500 is serviced by a single supply ship which visits up to 25 times a year. Isolation has acted historically as a natural barrier to pest arrival and border control has followed the conventional practice of protecting agricultural interests through restrictions on fresh produce, plant materials, livestock and pets. The bene?ts of isolation were compromised in 2016 when the ?rst airport opened. Private jets arrive now from Africa, Europe and South America, and commercial ?ights started at the end of 2017. A programme of biosecurity capacity building and strengthening was established in anticipation of this air tra?c. St Helena authorities introduced a national biosecurity framework and associated policy (entitled Biosecurity St Helena), the latter constructed through multi-sectoral consultation, and key stakeholders participated throughout in policy development. Biosecurity St Helena applies international standards set by the International Plant Protection Convention across the biosecurity continuum. As is typical in small island nations, human and ?nancial resources are limited, so that the biosecurity strategy addresses mainly higher risks. Compliance is heavily reliant on public awareness. Active communication engages all community sectors in biosecurity work through education, information, advocacy and feedback. Authorities use key performance indicators to measure the e?ectiveness of this approach. Biosecurity St Helena is a model of actively socialised biosecurity for other small island nations.

Archipelago-wide island restoration in the Galapagos Islands: Reducing costs of invaisve mammal eradication programs and reinvasion risk

Available Online

Campbell, Karl J.

Carrion, Victor

Cruz, Felipe

Donian, C. Josh

Lavoie, Christian

Invasive alien mammals are the major driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation on islands. Over the past three decades, invasive mammal eradication from islands has become one of society's most powerful tools for preventing extinction of insular endemics and restoring insular ecosystems. As practitioners tackle larger islands for restoration, three factors will heavily influence success and outcomes: the degree of local support, the ability to mitigate for non-target impacts, and the ability to eradicate non-native species more cost-effectively. Investments in removing invasive species, however, must be weighed against the risk of reintroduction. One way to reduce reintroduction risks is to eradicate the target invasive species from an entire archipelago, and thus eliminate readily available sources. We illustrate the costs and benefits of this approach with the efforts to remove invasive goats from the Galápagos Islands. Project Isabela, the world's largest island restoration effort to date, removed > 140,000 goats from > 500,000 ha for a cost of US$10.5 million. Leveraging the capacity built during Project Isabela, and given that goat reintroductions have been common over the past decade, we implemented an archipelago-wide goat eradication strategy. Feral goats remain on three islands in the archipelago, and removal efforts are underway. Efforts on the Galápagos Islands demonstrate that for some species, island size is no longer the limiting factor with respect to eradication. Rather, bureaucratic processes, financing, political will, and stakeholder approval appear to be the new challenges. Eradication efforts have delivered a suite of biodiversity benefits that are in the process of revealing themselves. The costs of rectifying intentional reintroductions are high in terms of financial and human resources. Reducing the archipelago-wide goat density to low levels is a technical approach to reducing reintroduction risk in the short-term, and is being complemented with a longer-term social approach focused on education and governance.

Zero-tolerance biosecurity protects high-conservation-value island nature reserve.

Available Online

Scott,John K. McKirdy, Simon J. van der Merwe, Johann Green, Roy Burbidge, Andrew A. Pickles, Greg Hardie,Darryl C. Morris, Keith Kendrick, Peter G. Thomas, Melissa L. Horton, Kristin L. OConner, Simon Downs, Justin Stoklosa, Richard Lagdon, Russell Marks, Barbara Naim, Malcolm Mengersen, Kerrie

Barrow Island, north-west coast of Australia, is one of the worlds significant conservation areas, harboring marsupials that have become extinct or threatened on mainland Australia as well as a rich diversity of plants and animals, some endemic. Access to construct a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant, Australias largest infrastructure development, on the island was conditional on no non-indigenous species (NIS) becoming established. We developed a comprehensive biosecurity system to protect the islands biodiversity. From 2009 to 2015 more than 0.5 million passengers and 12.2 million tonnes of freight were transported to the island under the biosecurity system, requiring 1.5 million hrs of inspections. No establishments of NIS were detected. We made four observations that will assist development of biosecurity systems. Firstly, the frequency of detections of organisms corresponded best to a mixture log-normal distribution including the high number of zero inspections and extreme values involving rare incursions. Secondly, comprehensive knowledge of the islands biota allowed estimation of false positive detections (62% native species). Thirdly, detections at the border did not predict incursions on the island. Fourthly, the workforce detected more than half post-border incursions (59%). Similar approaches can and should be implemented for all areas of significant conservation value.

Prevention, Eradication and Containment of Invasive Species: Illustrations from Hawaii

Burnett, Kimberly

Kaiser, Brooks

Pitafi, Basharat A.

Roumasset, James

Invasive species change ecosystems and the economic services such ecosystems provide. Optimal policy will minimize the expected damages and costs of prevention and control. We seek to explain policy outcomes as a function of biological and economic factors, using the case of Hawaii to illustrate. First, we consider an existing invasion, Miconia calvescens, a plant with the potential to reduce biodiversity, soil cover, and water availability. We then examine an imminent threat, the potential arrival of the Brown Treesnake (Boiga irregularis). The arrival of the snake to Guam has led to native bird extirpations, power outages, and health costs.

An invasive ant distribution database to support biosecurity risk analysis in the Pacific

Island and Ocean Ecosystems, BRB

Burne, Allan R.

Cooling, Meghan

Gruber, Monica A.

Invasive species are one of the most serious threats to biodiversity. Up-to-date and accurate information on the distribution of invasive species is an important biosecurity risk analysis tool. Several databases are available to determine the distributions of invasive species and native species. However, keeping this information current is a real challenge. Ants are among the most widespread invasive species. Five species of ants are listed in the IUCN list of damaging invasive species, and many other species are also invasive in the Pacific. We sought to determine and update the distribution information for the 18 most problematic invasive ant species in the Pacific to assist in Small Island Developing States with risk analysis. We compared the information on six public databases, conducted a literature review, and contacted experts on invasive ants in the Pacific region to resolve conflicting information. While most public records were accurate we found some new records had not yet been incorporated into the public databases, and some information was inaccurate. The maintenance of public databases faces an enormous challenge in balancing completeness (~15 000 ant species in this case) with accuracy (the impossibility of constantly surveying) and utility.

National Ballast Water Management Strategy 2016-2020 Cook Islands

Waste Management and Pollution Control, BRB

Available Online

Government of Cook Islands

The importance of coastal and marine environments to every aspect of the lives of Pacific Islanders cannot be overstated. Pacific Island Countries (PICs) maintain resource rights and management responsibilities for over 30million square kilometres of ocean, equivalent to the total land area of Canada, China and the USA. The total population of coastal pacific islanders is only 2.6 million. There are 11 square kilometres of ocean for each Pacific Islander. Jurisdictionally, the ocean is 200 times more significant to the average Pacific Islander than it is to the average global citizen.

Global threats from invasive alien species in the twenty-first century and national response capacities

Climate Change Resilience, BRB

Available Online

Blumenthal, Dana M.

Bradley, Bethany A.

Dukes, Jeffrey S.

Early, Regan

Gonzalez, Patrick

Grosholz, Edwin D.

Ibañez, Ines

Lawler, Joshua J.

Miller, Luke P.

Olden, Julian D.

Sorte, Cascade J.B.

Tatem, Andrew J.

Invasive alien species (IAS) threaten human livelihoods and biodiversity globally. Increasing globalization facilitates IAS arrival, and environmental changes, including climate change, facilitate IAS establishment. Here we provide the first global, spatial analysis of the terrestrial threat from IAS in light of twenty-first century globalization and environmental change, and evaluate national capacities to prevent and manage species invasions. We find that one-sixth of the global land surface is highly vulnerable to invasion, including substantial areas in developing economies and biodiversity hotspots. The dominant invasion vectors differ between high-income countries (imports, particularly of plants and pets) and low-income countries (air travel). Uniting data on the causes of introduction and establishment can improve early-warning and eradication schemes. Most countries have limited capacity to act against invasions. In particular, we reveal a clear need for proactive invasion strategies in areas with high poverty levels, high biodiversity and low historical levels of invasion.

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