Fiji is Losing Fight Against

Oryctes Rhinoceros

Although eradication measures were introduced as soon as the Rhinoceros beetle pest was discovered in Fiji early in 1953, the Board set up to deal with its control now says that it appears to be fighting a losing battle.

IN a report recently issued in Suva, by the Cocount Pests and Diseases Board, it is stated that more grubs and beetles are now being found in Viti Levu than at the start of the campaign. Nor has the beetle been contained within the Suva area where it was originally discovered but has spread westwards to Serua and north from Rewa along the Tailevu coast.

Recently it has been discovered in the Ra district.

Should the infected area spread much further, the Board doubts whether it will have the resources to carry on work at present intensity.

Private opinion expressed in knowledgable circles in Fiji is that it is almost inevitable that, sooner or later, the pest will find its way to some of the other copra-growing areas of Fiji—and this is where the tragedy will really start.

Viti Levu, where as far as is known the beetle is confined at present, produces virtually no copra. There is a “beetle check” on inter-island shipping, but it is by no means so thorough that the pest could not slip through. In order to be 100 per cent effective, the search would have to be 100 per cent thorough, plus possibly, fumigating each time a ship left Viti Levu for one of the outer islands.

The requirement that ships from beetle-infested countries should stand off in the stream at Suva between sunset and sunrise is also regarded, unofficially, as equivalent to shutting the stable after the horse has escaped. What matter if an odd beetle lands at Suva now, it is asked. The pest is already established.

Biological control of a type not yet discovered is the best hope for eradication of the beetle. Zanzibar wasps, introduced into Western Samoa and New Guinea, have been of negligible assistance.

In the meantime, the Board in Fiji is unanimous that the present campaign in Viti Levu should be continued. The Board has 200 field workers on its pay-roll, who are paid from a tax levied on Qopra producers.

Experts are of the opinion that there is some natural check to the pest in its Asian homeland, and that for this reason the large “continental” islands such as New Britain where it has been estab

lished since the war, in some way do not suffer the actual damage from the beetle that has been suffered in some of the oceanic type islands in Micronesia where devasatation has at times been almost complete.

This obviously is the great risk in Fiji: The Board has reported that where the beetle is already established in Viti Levu the damage has been small; but it may be a far different story if it were introduced to some of the Lau islands which have a vastly different climate and geological make-up.

From the moment the beetle was discovered in Fiji, neither effort nor money has been spared in the fight against it. In New Britain and New Ireland, neither planters nor the Administration have done any thing more than introduce a hundred or so African wasps— whose efficacy was discredited years ago in Western Samoa. Yet there appears to have been no falling off of copra production in New Britain —the heart of the copra pro ducing area of the P-NG Territory.

In spite of its efforts Fiji appears to have done no better than New Guinea, which has done nothing.

The unknown factor is, of course, what beetle infection of Fiji’s outer islands might mean. And while It can be contained in Viti Levu, where it can do little economic damage, all efforts to keep Rhinoceros beetles from the rest of Fiji are worthwhile.