Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Second, other pressing issues of direct relevance to the management of the
Christmas Island National Park (e.g. planning for a refugee detention centre,
a satellite launching facility, and phosphate mining activities) all placed an
extraordinary burden on managers in the lead up and conduct of the aerial
operation.
An independent steering committee
9)
. A steering committee comprising
scientists, managers, and policymakers guided, advised, reported, and eval-
uated the programme with independence from the management authority
in a timely fashion, without any formal jurisdiction or direct funding. All
were unpaid volunteers working primarily through frequent teleconferences
across three time zones.
10)
Successful response sometimes requires a healthy dose of luck.
Serendipity
played a signifi cant role in the success of the programme. For example, the
early detection of supercolonies was largely due to chance, while doing basic
research on the last funded trip examining the role of the red land crab in
island rainforest dynamics. This basic natural history and research, which
began 15 years earlier, primed an appreciation for impacts following the
removal of the native red land crab, a keystone species. We agree with Louis
Pasteur: chance really does favour the prepared mind. Second, military-grade
GPS became more widely available only in May 2000, increasing its preci-
sion fi vefold and making it possible to navigate accurately beneath the rain-
forest canopy with hand-held units just in time for the fi rst IWS. Previous
attempts just a few months earlier had been a depressing and dismal failure.
Third, an aviation company with the capacity to do job was available and
a single pilot/engineer was willing to take on what was for them a relatively
small job.
Successful response requires quick thinking
11)
. Things go wrong, and on
Christmas Island, two incidents threatened to derail the aerial baiting oper-
ation almost before it began. First, the complexities of transferring coord-
inates from the CIGIS to the pilot's dual GPS system did not become
apparent until after the aircraft was actually on the island. Even worse, all
supercolonies had been mapped in the IWS on a metre (UTM) grid, but
the pilot required coordinates in the form of degrees, minutes, seconds, and
decimal seconds. Second, the bait arrived on the island too moist to fl ow
through the hopper. In both situations, good old-fashioned nous was key to
solving these problems and salvaging the project.
Who you know is as important as what you know.
12)
Networking with other
groups proved pivotal. First, the notion of aerial baiting on a remote oceanic
island stood on the shoulders of previous successes on New Zealand islands.
Second, the fact that one steering committee member was involved directly
in the complex effort to eradicate the red imported fi re ant in Brisbane gave
the control operation on Christmas Island access to their technology for aer-
ial bait delivery and key contacts, including the aviation company.
