Close to $3 million will be needed by Biosecurity Authority of Fiji (BAF) to address the Asian subterranean termite (AST) problem in Lautoka and Labasa.
While presenting at a termite control stakeholders meeting in Lautoka last week, BAF chief executive officer Michael Bartlett said they would need significant financial support to address the problem of pests which had become endemic to Fiji.
“The problem is real and the problem is serious,” he said.
“AST arrived approximately 30 years ago and it exploded in numbers in 2009 and 2010. So by now the insect is endemic in our environment.
“It no longer is an evasive alien species. It has been here for 30 years. It is now home.
“So that changes our approach.”
He said the damage caused by AST should not be ignored any longer.
“To give a picture of what AST is capable of, in South West Florida in the US which has a similar climate as Fiji, this insect causes $US5 billion ($F11.2 billion) worth of damage and they have been unable to control the spread.
“One in five houses in Australia is infested with termites, whole pine plantations have been decimated by AST and there were hundreds of old monuments in Samoa that have been destroyed.
“The South Pacific is the most highly-infested area on earth so this is a big problem and it will require a lot of resources to contain it.”
Mr Bartlett said BAF had a brand new plan on how to address this problem which would need government assistance.
“We cannot let this go on and our approach to it up until last December was the equivalent of putting a band-aid over the infections.
“Someone will ring us, we treat the house and we kill the termites but if we don’t know about it, we can’t fix and if we can’t fix it, the problem will exponentially increase.”
