In Polynesia, it seems that the disaster will be taken seriously in account only when turned to irreversible and catastrophic, may be by 2009.
the New-Caledonian failure, with its full coffee crops abandon, don't seems to act as consistent warning.
If New-Caledonia can count on its nickelfields to find out a trustable way, Polynesia can only count on its Tourism and Agriculture, that is to say onto the favorite targets of this pest.
This shows the seriousness of which is emerging for it once this war loosen.
The collective struggle must be as precocious and as aggressive as possible.
Today, in March 2008, that is to say three years and a half after the first public alert, it is still not actually started as:
Although all doesn't seem awfully lost, Polynesia's situation is critical, for itself as for all countries trading with:
Tahiti is, now and more and more, a serious threat
for all the other Polynesian Islands,
and for all countries exchanging with it.
Up to now, Polynesia is structuring itself to face this scourge for which the main of its population still underestimate the true gravity.
It needs international, national, and local supports:
A site devoted to this pest in Polynesia has been built and other ones, like ours, spread the latest news about this disaster.
Hope still exists but it is weak, and get weaker every day.
To catch our last chance to avoid losing everything, SPEAK LOUDLY ABOUT IT, please, broadcast this information around you.
Thanks for the country, thanks for the Earth.
If you live in Polynesia in an area not yet pooled,
do make a test at home and give us your results.
(cf. "Respond" above)
Overseas: The silent death
Overseas departments, territories, and countries are mainly located between tropics or beyond polar circles, that is to say in areas biologically extremely fragile, the ones because life conditions are awfully upon the extremely cold climate specificities, the others to the conditions of luxuriant complexity of their biosphere, itself comming from their ideal climate for the life development.
Their colonization by man, and above all by his industries and their wastes, is goiing to outrageously simplify their diversity in species, if not just their life. Anyone knows now that the climate change targets first the areas where life and its diversity are the most fragile. The climate change is under fashion since several years by its destructive effects, now palpables everywhere in the world.
The second worldwide plague
An other devastating source exists, partly associated with the previous one, which ravages the world in a as incidious and selective manner, but whose effects have not yet reach an as flagrant level, for now: Species introductions. Actually, if the climate change took its origin in the industrial revolution of 1850, invasive species started to spread only with the modernization of our transportation means, modernization springing too from this revolution, and which took its cruising speed far after 1850.
In practice, the importation of noxious species, dangerous in ecosystems very far from their own, has been and remains essentially passive, invisible. If, sometimes, the introduction of a pest could have been intentionnal, as for the Euglandina rosea (american carnivorous landsnail), or Platydemus gondii (carnivorous flatworm) against Lissachatina fulica (giant african snail), or as Wasmannia auropunctata (Little Fire Ant) against cultural pests in Gabon, the main of the species called invasive have colonized other ecosystems than their in a passive way, as stowaway passengers in our very modern and efficient transport tools. Given that the worldwide exchanges rythm goes speeder, and that biosecurity and anti-prophylactic measures are still at a level more in infancy than those against the climate change, the number of these invasions follows an exponential trajectory at the planet scale. The most dramatically threatened areas are, obviously, the most fragile of the world.
Silent exponential
The impressive increase in importance of these importations, as catastrophic as silent at start, pushed the UNO to set up a surveillance permanent group, the ISSG, or Invasive Species Specialists Group, part of the Species Survival Commission, itself department of the IUCN. The number of species ranked as invasive overpasses 5.000, some are added regularly and more and more often.
The ISSG built an Internet site where is attempted to describe and watch their worldwide progression. Among these several thousands of invasive species, a hundred are pointed out as the most offensive. (cf. http://www.issg.org/database/species/search.asp?st=100ss&fr=1&str= ) These species belong either to the animal or vegetal reigns. Near all families are represented, from the rudimentary viruses to the very sophisticated graminae, ants, and mammals.
It is appalling to observe that the oversea regions are all affected by the main of the species in this "top 100", and that this is awfully passed in silence at the central level. It is more appalling to observe that the species at the top of this listing ordered by par dangeroussness is not subject to any specific fight/prevention strategy, appart from the too rare self-defense reactions from some of the directly concerned regions. The oversea is left abandonned so to itself in front of these catastrophes yet as serious as were the famous potato beetle, the spanish flu, or the Phylloxera, in Europe.
Today, who, in the mother country, knows what is a Miconia, a Little Fire Ant or a Banana Virus?
Overseas, then Europe
In the big continental countries, the biodiversity loss is mainly due to habitat destruction. In the insular Oversea, made of small habitats explaining its high level of endemism, invasive species are the main threat. But, big continental countries supervising this insular Oversea are very far from it, which prevaricate their understanding of the true constraints and stakes. The recent Chicungunya explosion testifies.
At a time where the Overseas Biodiversity Conservation seems to be under fashion, this total silence is more than surprising, because all invasive species, without any exception and the worst in first, all invasive species massacre the Biodiversity in ecosystems they reach to settle. Damages inflicted to crops and other human activities are only the visible part of a huge iceberg.
The catastrophe of these invasions is so much passed out in silence that it don't exist any precise inventory accessible for the public, while the main vector of these invisibles passives diffusions is this same public. Rare fighting Plans are entirely assumed by the local threatened communities. The republic says that all citizens are everywhere equals. Why this silence and this abandon, since half a century?
If New-Caledonia can't anymore evict the Little Fire Ant now, because of the immensity of the invaded areas, it is not yet the case in Polynesia.
New-Caledonia needs help to try to free areas which are the most indispensable for its activities, and to find solutions to push back this ennemy.
Polynesia needs help to make its full inventory, and to eradicate the springing infestations everywhere where it is still possible.
The whole Overseas needs modern solutions to try to save which still can be. The Oveseas needs specific means to biologically close its frontiers to pests which have not yet entered, and to fight those which are already in.
Mother country would be well-advised to help Overseas, because these tropical invasive and noxious alien species have their world distribution area enlarging due to the climate change and to human activities: Some greenhouses and permanently air-conditionned buildings in England as in Canada are yet invaded in a concerning manner by this Little Fire Ant, and this despite biosecurity barriers yet much more serious at their frontiers than those of Overseas, and fight and prevention means much more accessibles than from the other side of the world. The very big majority of Overseas productions going for export goes to the mother country first, the main Overseas tourists stream comes also from the mother country. The risk is thus very strong.
Overseas begs the mother country to be seen in an other way than a play-field only made of lagoons, sands and coconut trees, or as nickel tank: The Overseas will never be able alone to bring into play means at the level of those taken by Europe against the invasive species which, in the old times, assaulted it (Phylloxera, Potato bettle, Hyacinth, Caulerpa, etc.) while the surface of its territories is far greater, its biodiversity far more fragile, and its communication network far more rudimentary.
Overseas are slowly dying of this pernicious and infinitely contagious disease.
Eric Loeve - Tahiti - 7 April 2007.
EVOLUTION OF TRANSPORTATION TECHNIQUES
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Without the two shown worldwide wars steps, this illustration of the inventions rythm would follow a perfect exponential curve:
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As we saw, the passive invasions rate must follow, at an infinitely higher scale.
The satellite composite photo below was made by ploting each ship detected in yellow, on the basis of a constant lapse of time. A same ship is, thus, ploted several times.
It gives a good idea of the main roads followed by the economic marine stream, the Invasive Alien Species pipelines :
Japan takes the lion's share. The two main nodes in the middle of the Ocean are Hawaii in the Northern hemisphere, and Tahiti in the Southern one. The Panama Channel leads mainly to New-Zealand and Tahiti. New-Caledonia is a node between Hawaii, Australia, Japan and Fijii, This last being also a direct receiver from the USA, and a quite direct one from the Panama Channel.
