Border safety
Monitoring and surveillance of exotic pests
IN ensuring that Fiji remains safe from exotic plant and animal pests and diseases, BAF undertakes monitoring and surveillance activities. In this week’s feature, we take a look at some of the ways BAF ensures Fiji borders are safe from exotic plant pests which are of concern.
The Monitoring and Surveillance Program, in a nutshell, involves pre-border, border and post border risk mitigation activities.
■ Pre-border — ensures that biosecurity risks associated with the import of commodities are eliminated at the county of origin before these are exported to Fiji. These activities include auditing of commodity pathways at the originating country, import risk assessments and biosecurity import specifications that provide guidelines for treatment of commodities.
■ Border — activities carried out at the airports and seaports include profiling and clearance of vessels, aircraft, passengers, transit cargo and screening of parcels at mail centres, supervision of treatments in the case of non-compliance, supervision of garbage disposal, bonding of foreign animals and monitoring of yachts. The main purpose of engaging in this activity is to ensure that all conveyances, persons and cargo arriving into Fiji do not become pathways for the introduction of exotic plant and animal pests and diseases.
■ Post-border — activities carried out at the Post Entry Quarantine facilities such as monitoring of live imported plants for disease symptoms for a certain period of time. Further, activities carried out at the Biosecurity Approved Premises (BAPs) including inspection of imported cargo and supervision of treatment. Post-border activities also extend into pest surveillance by BAF throughout the Fiji island chain.
Conducting pest surveillance to determine pest incidence in Fiji
Surveillance for exotic pests and diseases is an integral activity undertaken by BAF as an “early warning system”. In the event that exotic pests are found during regular surveillance (or if an incursion is detected), BAF will be able to execute containment and eradication programs in a timely manner to prevent the exotic pest from spreading.
Below we take a brief look at the some of the exotic plant pests under BAF surveillance radar.
Fruit flies
Fruit flies cause considerable damage to several important agricultural commodities. There are seven species of Tephritid fruit flies known to occur in Fiji, however, the introduction of new species would cause economic losses from destruction and spoilage of host commodities, costs associated with implementing control measures and loss of international markets because of restrictions on shipment of host commodities.
BAF fruit fly surveillance operations include a preparatory phase followed by the field operations phase.
Modified steiner traps are used to monitor population levels of local fruit flies of economic importance to Fiji and also to ensure exotic fruit flies have not come into the country. Such data also helps to negotiate for international trade markets.
BAF fruit fly traps are strategically placed in various locations around Fiji.
These include areas close to ports of entry (for example jetties, marinas, wharves, airstrips and airports), areas with high foreign visitor arrivals (for example hotels, resorts, embassies, high-class residential zones and industrial points) as well as outer islands (for example islands in the Mamanuca and Yasawa groups).
Steiner traps (known as dry traps) use a chemical agent (Malathion insecticide mixed with pheromone lures) to kill the trapped fruit fly inside the trap.
The killed fruit flies are collected in dried form from the traps and placed in labelled cardboard boxes, securely closed to retain the contents and then sent to the BAF Entomology laboratory for count and identification.
The effective use of traps in undertaking fruit fly surveys relies on the combined ability of the trap, attractant and killing agent to attract and capture target fruit fly species and then to kill and preserve them for effective identification, counting, data collection and analysis.
BAF surveillance staff are well-skilled in deploying and servicing traps.
Modified Steiner traps used for fruit fly surveillance
Other than the fruit flies, the red imported fire ants (RIFA), giant African snail (GAS) and the Asian gypsy moth (AGM) are also exotic pests of concern to BAF which will be discussed in length in next week’s article.
This is a weekly contribution from the Biosecurity Authority of Fiji. For any queries please contact them on 3312512 or Short Codes: General Enquiries - 5994, Termites - 5996, Giant Invasive Iguana (GII) - 5995, Animal Disease Surveillance - 5997 or email info@baf.com.fj, visit BAF website www.baf.com.fj