Journal archives for September 2016

September 8, 2016

Visit to Hawaii -- World Conservation Congress and Mosquito Workshop and > 320 records!

Hi all,

I attended the IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Honolulu last weekend and it was great to see Hawaii's leadership in conservation, community empowerment and sustainability. Now I'm on the Big Island with Van Eden having just participated in a satellite workshop focused on helping keep Hawaii healthy and free of mosquitoes and mosquito borne disease. The workshop was sponsored by Mayor Kenoi (big mahalo mayor)!

As you know if you are a regular iNat "Mosquitoes in Hawaii" participant, Hawaii never had any mosquitoes before 1825. Now six invasive mosquitoes transmit human and wildlife pathogens in Hawaii. For instance, not only did Hawaii just have a Dengue outbreak transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, but avian malaria transmitted by the S. House Mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus threatens the last remaining endangered Hawaiian Honeycreepers. Something must be done immediately or several of these species may go extinct within the decade!

The workshop, hi-lighted a variety of solutions that are already being employed in places such as Australia, Brazil and California: For example, new work in the past few years focused on modernizing long-used sterile insect techniques basically uses a naturally occurring bacterium Wolbachia to suppress the populations of the Yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti that transmits Dengue and Zika virus and this method can be used with Culex too!

Recall, if we address the mosquito problem, we get to the common cause of threats to both human wildlife health at the same time. Eventually eliminating these invasive mosquito species, that were never native to Hawaii, could ensure people and Hawaii’s tourism economy remains healthy and will prevent the further loss of Hawaii’s biological heritage the unique biodiversity of honeycreepers found no where else on Earth.

I know ideas like these can seem pretty low priority when we don't have Dengue or Zika right now. You might ask, 'so what' about birds and mosquitoes? Just remember that because these mosquitoes are here, Hawaiians are vulnerable to viruses that could be carried in with a traveler as Dengue, Chikungunya, West-Nile and Zika. Similarly mosquitoes and other invasive species threaten the unique biology and culture of Hawaii and losing the unique diversity of the amazing Hawaiian Honeycreepers would be devastating, we cannot let that happen!

I was really excited to participate in the meeting to see big cooperation from a range of locals participating including Hawaii's conservation leaders, folks from local and state government and guests that also attended the WCC. I was happy to see everyone come together to understand both the dimensions of the problem and talk about the range of possible solutions to help create a disease and mosquito free Hawaii! One thing was clear, way more people need get involved, so I hope we will see more meetings like this around the islands. For now, as always, if you have any questions, please comment below or send me a message (@cydno).

Aloha and stay safe,

Durrell (@cydno)

PS. Thanks for all your efforts we now have over 320 mosquito records and we will go look for more now!

Posted on September 8, 2016 11:47 PM by cydno cydno | 0 comments | Leave a comment