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The Pacific Island nation of Niue was a leading voice at the recent COP28, calling for efforts to significantly scale up investment in the management of invasive species as a key action for increasing the climate resilience of vulnerable island nations.

Managing Invasive Species to Create a Great Green Line of Defense for the Pacific. Controlling invasive species is one of the most effective tool for restoring island resilience.

Invasive Alien Species (IAS) are a major threat to marine, freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity of the Pacific islands and to the people there that depend on biodiversity for their livelihoods. Invasive species are implicated in the decline of hundreds of species in the region. Participating Pacific states and the executing agency SPREP (Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme) recognised the need to implement the regional IAS strategy, “Guidelines for Invasive Species Management in the Pacific. A Pacific strategy for managing pests, weeds and other invasive species” (hereafter, the Guidelines) and develop and implement national IAS plans and strategies. The Guidelines were originally identified as a product under this project, but were completed in 2009 prior to writing this proposal. As envisaged during the PIF process the proposed project contributes to the implementation of the Guidelines, each country’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan and helps each to meet its responsibilities under Article 8 (h) of the CBD and several other international agreements addressing IAS. The three main components (not including components related to project management) of the proposed project are designed to capture outcomes and outputs described in the Project Identification Form but they have been reorganized to follow the structure of the Guidelines.

Factsheet for the Invasive species programme management course

The PRISMSS is a regional mechanism, which facilitates the scaling up of invasive species management in the Pacific. It provides management support for on the groud invasive species actions

Days 1 and 2 of the workshop course exposed participants to the theory behind rodent eradications (Fig 1). The nature and importance of undertaking a project feasibility assessment was explained and the key questions that need to be answered to determine if a project is feasible were discussed.  

The Prevention and Management of Invasive Species: Forging Cooperation throughout the Austral Pacific

This review was prepared by the Pacific Invasives Initiative (PII) on request from the Pacific Invasives Partnership (PIP). It was undertaken to examine the invasive species management components within the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans of twelve Pacific island countries (PICs): Cook Islands, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. The results of the review show that invasive species management is included as a component in eleven National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans, Marshall Islands being the only country not to include invasive species management. Five countries have also developed National Invasive Species Action Plans: Federated States of Micronesia (for Kosrae, Pohnpei and Yap), Kiribati (for Kiribati and Line Islands), Marshall Islands, Palau and Samoa; to support their National Biodiversity Strategy Action Plans and to provide a framework for invasive species management

Six archaeological sites up to 1000years old on Aitutaki, Cook Islands, have yielded bones of 15speciesof birds, five of which no longer occur ontheisland: Pterodromarostrata(Tahiti Petrel);Sula sula(Red-footedBooby); Dendrocygna,undescribedsp.(alarge,extinctwhistlingduck); Porzanatabuensis (Sooty Crake); and Vini kuhlii (Rimatara Lorikeet). Of these, only S. sula and P. tabuensis survive anywhere in the CookIslands today.The nearest record of anyspecies ofDendrocygnaisinFiji.Asidefrom theaquaticspeciesEgrettasacra (Pacific Reef-Heron) and Anas superciliosa (Gray Duck), the only native, resident land bird on Aitutakitoday isthe SocietyIslands Lorikeet(Viniperuviana), which may have been introduced from Tahiti. Residents ofAitutaki note that Ducula pacifica (Pacific Pigeon) and Ptilinopus rarotongensis (Cook Islands Fruit-Dove)also occurredthere until the 1940sor 1950s.There isno indigenous forest on Aitutaki today. The bones from Aitutaki also include the island's first record of the fruit batPteropus tonganus. Limestone caveson the island of Atiu yieldedthe undated bones of sixspeciesof birds, three of which no longer exist there or anywhere elsein the Cook Islands: Gallicolumba erythroptera (Society Islands Ground-Dove),Ducula aurorae (SocietyIslands Pigeon),and Vinikuhlii. Each of these specieshas been recovered from prehistoric sites on Mangaia as well. The limestone terrain of Atiu is mostly covered with native forest that supports populations of Ducula pacifica, Ptilinopus rarotongensis, Collocalia sawtelli(Atiu Swiftlet), and Halcyon tuta (Chattering Kingfisher). The survival of these land birds depends upon protection of Atiu's forests.