History, opportunities and challenges for biological control in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands

2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.H. Julien ◽  
J.K. Scott ◽  
W. Orapa ◽  
Q. Paynter
Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 583
Author(s):  
Carl C. Christensen ◽  
Robert H. Cowie ◽  
Norine W. Yeung ◽  
Kenneth A. Hayes

Classic biological control of pest non-marine mollusks has a long history of disastrous outcomes, and despite claims to the contrary, few advances have been made to ensure that contemporary biocontrol efforts targeting mollusks are safe and effective. For more than half a century, malacologists have warned of the dangers in applying practices developed in the field of insect biological control, where biocontrol agents are often highly host-specific, to the use of generalist predators and parasites against non-marine mollusk pests. Unfortunately, many of the lessons that should have been learned from these failed biocontrol programs have not been rigorously applied to contemporary efforts. Here, we briefly review the failures of past non-marine mollusk biocontrol efforts in the Pacific islands and their adverse environmental impacts that continue to reverberate across ecosystems. We highlight the fact that none of these past programs has ever been demonstrated to be effective against targeted species, and at least two (the snails Euglandina spp. and the flatworm Platydemus manokwari) are implicated in the extinction of hundreds of snail species endemic to Pacific islands. We also highlight other recent efforts, including the proposed use of sarcophagid flies and nematodes in the genus Phasmarhabditis, that clearly illustrate the false claims that past bad practices are not being repeated. We are not making the claim that biocontrol programs can never be safe and effective. Instead, we hope that in highlighting the need for robust controls, clear and measurable definitions of success, and a broader understanding of ecosystem level interactions within a rigorous scientific framework are all necessary before claims of success can be made by biocontrol advocates. Without such amendments to contemporary biocontrol programs, it will be impossible to avoid repeating the failures of non-marine mollusk biocontrol programs to date.


2000 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-227
Author(s):  
Paul Bailey ◽  
James Grayson ◽  
Michael Sturma ◽  
Peter Lineham

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
El-Shadan Tautolo ◽  
Leon Iusitini ◽  
Steve Taylor ◽  
Janis Paterson

Aims: To examine the prevalence of smoking, motivations for cessation, and impact of tobacco excise tax increases amongst a cohort of Pacific fathers at 11 years after the birth of their child.Methods: Within the context of broader interviews, 723 Pacific fathers participating in the Pacific Islands Families (PIF) Study were surveyed about their smoking at the 11-year measurement point. Prevalence of smoking was calculated, alongside motivations to quit, and the impact of increases to the excise tax on tobacco.Results: Smoking prevalence amongst Pacific fathers remains high (38%) at 11 years postpartum, although 81% of smokers disclosed interest in quitting smoking. The strongest motivation to quit smoking was their ‘own health’ (n = 185, 82%), followed by ‘the cost’ (n = 148, 66%), and the impact on ‘their child's health’ (n = 113, 50%). Among smokers, 12% (n = 31) had never attempted to quit, whereas 63% (n = 159) had made multiple attempts. Approximately 70% (n = 191) of smokers indicated the New Zealand Government-initiated tobacco excise tax increases caused them to reduce their tobacco consumption.Conclusions: High smoking prevalence amongst this cohort raises serious concerns about the risks Pacific families and communities face from smoking. Maintaining a sustained series of tobacco excise tax increases, alongside the utilisation of information on key motivators for Pacific fathers to quit smoking, may prove more effective in supporting Pacific communities to achieve the New Zealand Government's Smokefree 2025 goal.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Wallis ◽  
Anna Powles

Abstract One of President Joseph Biden's foreign policy priorities is to ‘renew’ and ‘strengthen’ the United States' alliances, as they were perceived to have been ‘undermined’ during the Trump administration, which regularly expressed concern that allies were free-riding on the United States' military capability. Yet the broad range of threats states face in the contemporary context suggests that security assistance from allies no longer only—or even primarily—comes in the form of military capability. We consider whether there is a need to rethink understandings of how alliance relationships are managed, particularly how the goals—or strategic burdens—of alliances are understood, how allies contribute to those burdens, and how influence is exercised within alliances. We do this by analysing how the United States–Australia and Australia–New Zealand alliances operate in the Pacific islands. Our focus on the Pacific islands reflects the United States' perception that the region plays a ‘critical’ role in helping to ‘preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region’. We conclude that these understandings need to be rethought, particularly in the Pacific islands, where meeting non-traditional security challenges such as economic, social and environmental issues, is important to advancing the United States, Australia and New Zealand's shared strategic goal of remaining the region's primary security partners and ensuring that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold.


2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Winkelmann

Ever since New Zealand became a British colony in 1840, it has attracted considerable numbers of European migrants. In the 1996 Population Census, 80 percent of the 3.6 million New Zealand residents claim European ethnic descent. While European immigration always has been, and continues to be, dominated by the UK, some noticeable Dutch immigration took place since 1950. Beginning in the 1960s, the overall share of European migration started a downward trend, with more and more immigrants arriving from the Pacific Islands and Asia.


2001 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-230
Author(s):  
Paul Bailey ◽  
James Grayson ◽  
Duncan Waterson ◽  
Peter Lineham

1927 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Bezzi

Having recently studied a large collection of Myiodaria from the Fiji Islands, and having received, through the courtesy of Dr. P. A. Buxton, a number of species from Samoa and other South Pacific Islands, I am able to make a revision of the Calliphoridae now before me, and to describe some new forms. I have also taken into consideration the specimens from New Zealand and from Eastern Australia in my collection, as well as the forms recently described by Aldrich, Hardy, Malloch, Patton and Surcouf, together with the taxonomic changes proposed by Senior-White, Shannon and Townsend.It seems that some species, probably those more closely associated with man, are widely spread through the Pacific Islands ; while several others seem to be very localised.


2017 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Schluter ◽  
Sathananthan Kanagaratnam ◽  
Steve Taylor ◽  
El-Shadan Tautolo

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