In December 2014 the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Aid Programme contracted Pacific Biosecurity to lead implementation of the Activity “Building resilience to biosecurity threats from invasive ants throughout the Pacific” over five years.

Our in-country partners are Tokelau EDNRE (Department of Economic Development, Natural Resources and Environment and Kiribati MELAD (Ministry of Environment, Land & Agricultural Development). Regional support agency partners are the Secretariat of the Pacific Commission (SPC) in Fiji, and Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in Samoa. The New Zealand partners are Pacific Biosecurity (PB) in Wellington and Pacific Invasives Initiative (PII) in Auckland.

The partners will deliver five outputs to achieve the Activity outcomes and overall goal:
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1. Sustainability Plans to explicitly identify the constraints or barriers to the project goals extending past the life of the project, and put in place measures to mitigate or remove these barriers;
2. Development of a Pacific Invasive Ant Toolkit (PIAT) to provide a set of detailed resources to enable in-country officers to implement and undertake effective biosecurity processes and management of invasive ants;
3. Delivery of Workshops to provide training on use of the PIAT resources to in-country and regional organisation partners;
4. Development and implementation of a Management Plan for yellow crazy ant in Tokelau;
5. Development and implementation of a Management Plan for yellow crazy ant in Kiritimati, Kiribati, which will provide case studies for the PIAT.

UPDATE

As at June 2018 we are four years into the Activity. As well as being on track for all our outputs, we have assisted other countries and organisations with advice, capacity-building, and resources, including SOP Manu in French Polynesia, and the Agriculture team in Tuvalu.
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