Detection is the first essential step
To save the country is the responsibility of each one, but we all need each others to achieve it:
Everyone would need to make a detection at home and to communicate her/his captures and location.
It is a heavy task to manage such a goal for all our compatriots but the method we have devised is simple, easy and very fast to use:
As soon as the alien was identified we tried to find a trustable detection method.
Scientists from the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Hawaii, especially Dr Daniel S. Gruner, gave us their protocol.
It is thus that we called it the "Hawaiian protocol".
It is a method very simple and very efficient even in places where LFA is not visible.
We employed and translated it into French (page 2 of this pdf document)
We also showed it on TV on a local channel (TNTV - 2005 - Report broadcast at noon):
TNTV-testHawaii.wmv - Size: 7.85 Mb - Duration: 3'53:
When these tests are done that way and the results transmitted we are allowed to make the diagnostic.
The value of these tests cannot be exaggerated:
All known colonies, except the very first one, have been discovered by such tests, coming from:
- either a testimony followed by positive tests,
- or done by pupils during their shool work.
If you live in Polynesia out of the known contaminated areas (cf. "Inventory", here above), being either on Tahiti or on an other Island,
we ask you to make it at least at your home and to transmit us your results by contacting us:
- At the Direction de l'Environnement - Phone: 47 66 66 (opened hours)
- At Fenua Animalia - Answering machine: 726 726 (24h/24)
Thanks, to you and for the country.
On November 15th 2006, on the recommendation of the Environment Minister, himself called to defend the proposal by his Direction de l'Environnement team, the Minister's Council took the following order:
Order 1301 CM of the 15 November 2006, published in the JOPF (Journal Officiel de la Polynésie Française)issued the 23 November 2006 (pp.4033-4034) and modifying the Code de l'Environnement:
|
Art. A. 123-10. - Special rule applicable to the Little Fire Ant: - The intentional transfert and with full knowledge of the fact of all diverse materials infested like green wastes, ground and other wastes, plants, from infested areas to safe areas, is strictly forbidden ; - Heavy machines working in infested areas are rid of insects by the appliance of a treatment adapted to the fight against fire ants, at the end of the job and before any move toward other zones. An invoice attesting the service or the purchase of treatment product is shown on demand of the administration in charge of the control, by those responsible, users and/or owners of these machines ; - To facilitate the fight and location of colonies, owners or tenants of lands infested by the Little Fire Ant, as soon as they know it, must make a statement to the Direction de l'Environnement, specifying, by all means, the position of their land (lot number, street, etc.) Infested lands owners take all measures economically and ecologically suitable to treat their land ; - Owners or tenants of land, infested or not, are bound to allow free access to public agents publics and to their teams in charge of the fight against the Little Fire Ant. Art. A. 123-12. Offences to the previous stipulations are liable to the sanctions described at the "livre 1er, titre 3" of the present code. |
Summary:
Like any order it is in application as soon as it is issued in the Journal Officiel de la Polynésie Française (JOPF), it is thus in application since November 23, 2006.
To treat one or two hectares in a wider contaminated area can only be a temporary operation:
As all nests cooperate immediately when they come in contact, eradication of a whole colony can be effective only after the last queen death, whether at adult or larval stage.
It is totally wrong to soup up a solution by purchasing drugs to spread oneself:
To efficiently treat contaminated a land is not an amateur affair, the 2005 attempts have proven it.
It is inefficient to ask owners themselves to treat theirs land because:
The only serious solution, truly efficient, is to call a registered professional for that job, specialized and trained to either temporarily de-contaminate a house, or to try to clean whole an area.
The professionnal solution is also the cheapest:
It is much more efficient and economical.
When considering the risk of returning to live in a house scattered/soaked by these chemicals, the situation is different:
The oldest testimonies of the LFA presence on Tahiti come from Mahina, for now, and date from 1995.
It must have arrived some time before, probably at the beginning of the 1990's, may be before because as there is invariably a time lapse between the initial contamination and the point when it becomes annoying enough to induce the first complaints.
All that we know today, by a recent analysis from the IRD-Noumea, is that the original stock came from New-Caledonia.
It is a discreet invader, its introduction is invisible at the beginning, all the more invisible because the Biosecurity measures were weak and the ways to by-pass it were many and easy. Things are changing now, but our Biosecurity fence is still in its infancy and other monsters of the same kind are waiting at our gates.
Entry gates are numerous: Postal shipping, traveller's luggage, and, above all, maritime containers.
Most of our importations come from marine freight and we know that more than 80% of the containers are not opened between the moment where they are sealed before loading and when they are open at the Polynesian recipient location.
Biosecurity controls are mainly exerted now on those carrying perishable foodstuffs (meats, vegetables), but those invaders encourage their spread by being loaded with items, like ceramic tiles, crude wood planks or other amorphous stuff. The fortuitous interceptions of Batrachians in 2006, at the recipient home and by him, prove it.
The final recipient is not, in general, trained for the detection of the most discreet invaders.
Entry into Polynesia today is still a gaping door.
Complaints were numerous in the last years before the identification but, as this monster (LFA) was unknown here, answers, when given, were either evasive or wrong (allergy of unknown origin, cataract for Pets, ...), when straight out it wasn't "mythomania" accusations!
The threat of introductions, the raison d'être of the ISSG, was either unknown or deliberately ignored because it was "adding yet another problem".
The formal identification of Wasmannia auropunctata by an official organism, the SDR, date of July 2004.
The public communication, on a young cub journalist initiative (...), date of October 12, 2004.
The same day of this newspaper article, I went to the Environment Ministry to try first to learn more on the monster, and second to learn how this news will be managed.
Unfortunately, the endless destructive quarrels of our politicians were, once again, toppling the government at the same time. Administration Services were - once again - anaesthetized, and this paralysis was going to last several long weeks.
Internet allowed us to get the description of this ant and the nature of its threat, to make contact with scientists from other countries (ISSG) and design a pooling presence method. Without them, the today situation would be already lost for our country. (cf. Detection tab above).
We immediately started, without any other support, to pool in the field and to mobilize the population against the LFA: We had to know ASAP where and how wide were the contaminated areas, mandatory preparatory work before any fight action. To collect the testimonies and to seek contamination frontiers is not technically difficult: The need is above all is for arms, thus time.
The mobilisation was harder because people had never seen or heard about the LFA and they couldn't believe the monstruosity of a so tiny an insect. Either that or they were living inside and the commonest encountered reflection was "It's over now, it's too late."
The basic work was extremely demanding of time and was by necessity carried out painfully slowly, with the support of the media (TVs, newspapers, radios), of voluntary field technicians and, too rarely, of politicians.
This work gave some fruit within a few months because the majority of the currently known colonies were discovered and mapped then and the new Agriculture Ministry begun to organize a wider action at the begginning of the following year despite that the general 2005 budget had anything to took that in charge.
From the beginning of 2005, the Agriculture Ministry set up an interdepartmental commission merging representatives of the operational services of the Environment, Urbanism, Health and Research ministries, and us. This commission was managed by an official representative from Agriculture.
This enabled the very first operation against the LFA to be undertaken:
The released budget didn't allow us to do more than that.
At the same time, we mobilized the residents of the Supermahina housing estate (engulfed by the widest known colony) in order to see their private properties and the surrounding areas (schedduled in the Government plan) treated at the same time. That was done, but contrarily to our advice, in order to make a little short-term money saving, they refused the joint proposal of all local professionals that we had got for them and chose, instead, to spread the chemical themselves in its consumer's version.
These actions stopped dead the expansion of at the currently known colonies but none has been eradicated.
The situation was thus stabilized at the beginning of the 2005-2006 wet season.
The year 2006 was the one of silent resignation by the Agriculture Ministry:
In fact, strictly nothing happened after September 2005.
Firstly, no budget was granted specifically against the LFA. Secondly, and above all, the official representative was absolutely not interested in being involved in the fight. All this was contrary to the PAPP recommendations. Further, she had never been stung by the ant and she doesn't reside inside a contaminated area. For her, this was "only a work in plus" (sic), which she translated, during an official meeting of the interdepartmental commission, by "I don't believe that a so tiny ant may induce so big damages." (sic !).
It is very likely that it was on the strength of her reports that her Minister and her Government didn't get a real grasp of what is going on. This added to her will to demobilize all good-wills by systematically discouraging them (other ministries included) and by retaining information. This would explain why strictly nothing was done in 2006 and that no budget had been granted.
Things started again after that when an eldery women from Mahina called for help because her situation had become unbearable and dangerous in her own home, and that this call was relayed in the medias. (cf. Emilie's story)
Following these reports, the government decided to grant, for 2007, a budget five times greater than the previous one. At the same time, the Environment Ministry learned, from information which reached them in October only, (e.g. at the beginning of the wet season (...)), that it was in charge of this fight from the beginning of the year 2006!
The decided budget is insufficient (50 million Fcfp = US$500,000) because, by this inaction, the contaminated surface had grown from about 200 to about 300 ha, the pest has not been eliminated in a single pass, and the topography of the contaminated areas is often very steep and uneven.
This year of inertia will have a high cost for the country.
As mentioned, in October 2006, two years after the public disclosure of the invasion, the Environment Ministry learned by accident that it had been in charge of the fight against the LFA for numerous months. (cf. previous tag)
The Minister decided to give the management of this project to his Operational Services, the Direction de l'Environnement (Diren), without any intermediary between him and them in his Ministry. The management goes to field teams, and so the risk of reproducing the grave mistake made by the Agriculture is thus seriously reduced. Furthermore, within the Direction de l'Environnement, all executives concerned have been attacked at least once by a LFA and they have experience of the pain of its sting.
The Diren is the project manager now.
The Diren immediately started to build a GIS> (Geographical Information System) to manage colonies, on the basis of all GPS waypoints taken in the field since 2004.
The first two management decisions taken by the Diren were to set up a permanent crisis cell joining all concerned actors, public or private, and to release as much budget as possible to start operations as soon as possible.
This SIGCrisis Permanent Cell, the Commission de Lutte contre les Pestes Envahissantes, works with an other transversal permanent cell, the Commission des Pesticides.
It comprises, in addition to the Diren, representatives from the Services of Town Planning, Rural Development (SDR) and Phytosanitary (Phyto), Health, Customs, Research, the Mayors Association, a private Environment Research Unit, a private town planning studies company, a representative of the local Pest-Control companies, a representative of the University of California, Berkeley, Research Station (Gump station, Moorea Is.), a senior representative of the French Army, and us..
Further, the Diren has set up a committee of coordination against the LFA, made by three Diren agents, the representative of the local Pest-Control companies and us..
This committee manages the daily action by mobilizing the different players involved.
Missions are devolved to private providers, linked with the Diren by contracts fixing their concrete objectives.They are:
This list will still develop, in particular on the post-treatment front, followings management (none can both judge and be judged).
This structure is very young, it is not yet completely built but it has been acting since November 2006 with the knowledge that it is a long-lasting job.
The Commission de Lutte contre les Pestes Envahissantes, with the elements which have been available, decided:
This work is enormous, requires a staff that we don't have and a consistent budget.
The occasional support of the Army for wide-scale operations is crucial, in particular in uneven areas.
The Army offers this support as long as it is actually a matter of occasional wide-scale operations.
The second half of April 2007 was the beginning of the first Direction de l'Environnement (Diren) campaign agaist the LFA.
Because of lack of means and staff, it was decided to concentrate the efforts against the widest known colony, i.e. on the crest where are built the Supermahina and Mahinarama housing estates, in Mahina commune, at the climatic frontier defined by the Trade Winds.
This choice, rather than to fight against the small spreaded colonies, was done considering that in this area the number of contaminated houses is bigger than within the other known colonies, all together. Thus, the contamination risk is the greatest for the whole country in this area, for now. The corrolary is that while this area is fighted, all the others are freely enlarging, and as they are widely splited up, the global contaminated surface will increase faster than if we did the reverse. However, as these losses of territories are mainly in the bush, the risk to increase the contamination power, e.g. the number of opportunities to transplant nests into safe areas, is more reduced when attacking first the area having the greatest number of houses.
Once again, this choice is forced due to the lack of means: Obviously, we would have prefered to be able to attack all the contaminated areas at the same time, but the 2007 budget don't allows that.
This targeted campaign run in three phasis:
The first phasis was conducted during the second part of April, with the free help of the French Army. It gave, in plus of the re-assessment of the known contamination 2007 extensions, to discover four new sources of infection. The Phase 1 comparative appraisial (pdf, 6.7 Mo) reports the results got in this area in 2005 and 2007, and tries to anticipate the evolution fot the two-three comming years.
The second phase just started, but the rains occuring every two days since the end of April slow down its course today (end of May 2007). This all the more as we plan, to treat all the targeted areas at a single time, to make aerial manurings with an helicopter: The product quantity used so is important. Thus, there is no question of taking the slightest risk to see rains destroying, waisting it.
The third phase is more difficult because the job is not to re-assess the frontiers, but to search for the residual areas within some hundreds of hectares in a landscape often difficult. For this phase, the commune undertook to solicit all the availanble energies, but it is obvious that this work exceeds its possibilities. Here too, there will be to make choices.
2007's July and August months were concentrated on the delimitation of known colonies frontiers. This work is not over.
The First International Pacific Invasive Ants Conference (IPIAC 2007) happened on Hawaii'Big Island, in late May 2007. We were there, and we received the support of Biosecurity NZ and of the South Pacific Commission Secretariat who offered a free subscribtion to an entomological tranning-workshop on Invasives Ants and their doppelgangers, trainning which occured in Suva (Fijii) late June 2007.
This allowed us to understand that the colony named "Baccino-Taurua" is not a LFA colony, but of its doppelganger, Tetramorium similimum. This area is still safe, in fact.
The crash of the Twin-Otter while taking-off from Moorea-Temae airport, flight QE1121 on August 9th, 2007, decapitate the struggle with the deaths of Mr. Pierre Coissac, Director of the Direction de l'Environnement (Diren), Mr. Guillaume Ratte, technical responsible in the Ministère du Tourisme et de l'Environnement, General Coordinator against the LFA, and Mr. Didier Laurier, Principal Private Secretary of this Ministry.
. 20 peoples died, the half were public agents returning from mission.
This catastrophe is coupled now with the Polynesia Government fall, this 31 August 2007.
The work runs on even without leaders, but all that plays against all of us.
On September 3rd, 2007 the Pacific Invasive Learning Network Annual Meeting opens on Moorea, in this context.
The political instability endured by the country since September 2007 gradually destroys all which was built since 2006.
The war seems actually lost, without having known a true fight.
The 9th or 10th government fall (23 February 2009), in 4 years, even if it had already endured a ministries reshuffle, on the 17 March, is the last one for now.
At the Environnement Ministry level, it was translated as a come back of Mr Georges Handerson, as minister, followed by the replacement of the operational services director, the Direction de l'Environnement, where a man with practical experience
, a forester of 25 years of experience, takes the place of the careerist politician put there during these 8 dark months.
If all was deeply locked, or about to be deeply destructured during these 8 months, since March things are going back to a normal way.
At the LFA war level, treatements were not interrupted in 2008, they were "only" done at half-dose, while all detections were frozen. This allowed all treated colonies to stay at an identical state, or lightly bigger, and to allow "metastasis" to multiply (quite all infestations discovered since a year are a year old or very few more, often less).
Since February the war machine against LFA is restructuring itself, and first results are yet palpable:
Anywhere in the World the same problem is faced against LFA:
Structured technology focuses at present on the use of Hydramethylnon, an organic pesticide sold, with a bait very attractive for the LFA, under the name of Amdro but, to respect the Environment, it has been designed in a very fragile form, so that it deteriorates very easily.
This product created about 20 years ago, was designed at the beginning against the RIFA, the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta which is even worse than the LFA and which makes daily life unbearable for many Americans, in the Southern states (Florida, Texas). These two ants do not belong to the same taxonomic genus but show very similar physiologies, behaviours and devastating effects. The main difference with the RIFA, apart from the size (the RIFA is three to four times greater than the LFA), is that the LFA never build anthills: Nests are quite undetectable by eyes. (cf.
Solenopsis invicta on the ISSG web site (in English))
Our present research focuses on three chemicals: Hydramethylnon, Fipronil and Propoxur.
These three chemicals, recommended against these ants, are all quickly destroyed in Nature, within two or three days. It is these additionnal critera which mainly guided our choice.
We would much prefer to use the last one only because it is the most targeted and the least persistent but its fragility, though desired, is an obstacle to its use in Polynesia: It is disintegrated by the ultra-violet rays of the sun and also by water. We live in a wet tropical climate.
During the wet season, that is about half of the year on Tahiti, tropical rains are quite uninterrupted or at least occurs daily (in particular by the end of the afternoon) and very rarely missing more than two days. Now, to allow these pesticides the time to act, that is to contaminate the heart of the remotest, burried nest, the need is of two dry days, preferably three.
The use of Hydramethylnon during wet seasons each time is an expensive gamble. A manure spreading destroyed by rain before having time to work its effects is a consistent financial waste, and bad for the Environment as runoffs carry the poison up to the lagoon. Now, it is impossible to efficiently attack a colony with the aim of eradication without meticulously spreading over its entire surface, whatever its size, to try to kill the last queen.
To find a pesticide awfully safe for the Environment and the less toxic possible is thus very tough but this dilemma is attenuated in the LFA case because the ant also kills so many other organisms that may be an obstacle to its expansion. By ex.: There were no beehive left in the Supermahina housing estate before we started the chemical fight: LFA had already eliminated all.
Researches carried under the aegis of the Délégation à l'Environnement since December 2006 aims to find the most efficient poison and bait mix and the least noxious for the environmnent, on the basis of these three chemicals, because no international recommendation exists for climates as wet as ours.
This means the Pacific Ant Prevention Programme.
It is both a list of advocacies against invasive ants and also a fighting international structure, built in 2004 on a New-Zealand initiative concerning the whole Pacific Oceanic Basin and put under the control of the South Pacific Commission (SPC).
Its objective is to coordinate the efforts of all countries in the area to prevent anywhere and as far as possible their contamination and to enhance containment attempts against established contaminations and the eradication when it is still possible.
The PAPP is in close contact with the ISSG (UNO commission).
The basic recommendations are regularly reviewed , because, as it is a young structure facing a serious problem as modern as difficult, studied and applied solutions are evolving fast. They have to be used in a general control framework for all SPC, all Pacific Ocean countries.
We try, obviously, to work in synergy with them.
