Hi Guenther and Bob,

One of the biggest problems for Solomon Is, let alone taking care of the coconut logs.  There are a number of private saw mills that have sawdust that has been accumulating and this is a gold mine for the CRB-G to breed on.  It will take some effort by the national government to get this private saw mills to get their act together to clean up all potential breeding sites for this CRB-G.

Joshus Wainiqolo

Posted on user's behalf

Hi Bob,

Between 94 and 98 I worked for Fiji MAF. We had a coconut replanting scheme going in Vanua Levu at a rate of about 1000 ha a year.

a)   The hard part of the old coconut palms was sold to Pacific Green for coconut furniture.

b)   The rest of the logs was chopped up in small pieces of about 1 foot in length, left in the sun to dry and then burned in the coconut driers.

c)    The logs were cut off as close as possible to the ground to avoid any trunks standing about that would rot over time  and turn into breeding sites

d)   Plus monitoring everything once a month

Under the conditions of Vanua Levu it worked.

For the Solomons I would recommend option b c d.

In addition :

e)   If the farmers are aware of the rhino beetles ok, if not somebody needs to explain to them the life cycle of the pest (in Vanua Levu we didnt ‘t need to do that because the farmers were aware of the pest)

f)    If the farmers can cut up the middle part of palms into boards for roofing all the better but that wood is pretty hard.. 

If you need more advise just let me know.

Best regards

guenther_e_rapp@yahoo.com

Posted on user's behalf

Many thanks everyone for your comments they are all very much as I expected, a lot of very hard work for our farmers. Our problem here is that until this beast arrived it was not necessary to remove dead palms, rotting logs and rotting vegetation from plantations so now a huge culture change will be required if we are going to remove breeding sites. Yes, Josh, I agree piles of sawdust will have to be dealt with too. There are also lots of ideas for using old palms (charcoal, shingles, furniture, etc.) but they all require markets to be in place. Charcoal is likely the best local bet but currently few use it so supply will by far exceed demand.

Are you sure that the larvae of this Oryctes ingest palms fiber or dry palm tissue? In other words, are they xylophagous? During tens of years, trunks of dead palms and drying pieces of palms have been considered to present a risk for RPW propagation. Very complicated and costly measures have been adopted – or not precisely because too expensive – to manage these wastes. We have established few years ago (see our communication during 2011 Reno ESA meeting) that these measures were useless because larvas don’t ingest palm fibres; they ingest the sap and liquid that they suck after chewing the fibrous tissues. We have established also that, in conformity with this previous behevior, female RPW that drill a few mm depth hole where they lay their eggs (contrary to what is repeated for years, no previous wounds are needed for RPW oviposition) will lay their eggs only in alive tissue, not in drying ones.  How is it with Oryctes rhinoceros?

Michael Ferry

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Is there a way to speed up decomposition of the logs?

Well ! My suggestions are here below.

I like the follow up on biologicals--- however???? invasiveness??? Large scale chipper shredders very unlikely. Industrial palm oil plantations may be able to do, but with dispersed family unit copra makers not feasible

Many thanks, Kalidas. Our oil palm people are already looking at a log slicer, plus eventually a compost turner. We will investigate the idea for the log rotting fungi to check for and harmful side effects.