Kia ora

Welcome to the Pacific Invasive Ant Toolkit!

What is the Pacific Invasive Ant Toolkit (PIAT) : Who can use the PIAT : How to use the PIAT :  History and background of the PIAT

What is the Pacific Invasive Ant Toolkit?

The Pacific Invasive Ant Toolkit is a collection of resources to help prevent and control invasive ants in the Pacific. We call this the PIAT for short.

The PIAT is mostly targeted at helping developing and remote Pacific Nations, who often do not have access to pest control locally and depend on outside help. But anyone is welcome to use it.

We decided that the PIAT was needed as the resources available to deal with invasive ants were in many different places and sometimes hard to find. So some of the resources you will find here have been specifically developed for PIAT, but others are available in other places. We always provide links to the original sources of information.

Who can use the PIAT

Anyone can use the PIAT. Biosecurity staff, consultants, village councils and home owners should find all they need here. If you can't find what you need here or think something is wrong or difficult to understand or use, contact us via email, or post or message us on our Facebook help page.  We always want to make the toolkit better!

All content on the PIAT is free for anyone to use, with a few copyright and ownership considerations to protect the owners of materials used in the toolkit. We would appreciate that if you find information on the toolkit that is useful to you, you mention the owners of the material and cite the PIAT. And please let us know if you do use it.

We strongly encourage scientists and other invasive species battlers, particularly those who work on invasive ants, to contribute to the toolkit. We'd love to hear from you, and want to ensure your work is appropriately credited and promoted when it appears in the PIAT.

If you want a CD or USB of the PIAT, send your address details to us. Alternatively, if you want to take a copy of the PIAT yourself, you can do this using a number of website capture tools. We have found HTTRACK is quite easy to use and preserves the formatting well, though it does work best in the Chrome and Firefox browsers. Once you have captured the site, click on the piat.org.nz directory and open the page index.html.

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How to use the PIAT

The PIAT is divided into seven main sections:

  • Problem ants: not all ants are a problem, but there are some important ones to watch out for, and they can cause serious problems
  • Prevention: prevention is cheaper, and easier in the long run, than trying to get rid of ants
  • Assessing the problem: before you start planning what to do about an ant problem you need to know how bad it is
  • Getting rid of ants: once you've decided to get rid of ants, you need to know how
  • Learning and teaching: awareness of why ants are a problem is really important
  • Legislation: laws, agreements and regulations help to prevent and manage ant problems
  • Getting help: as well as the resources in the PIAT, technical experts, regional agencies and NGOs can help you

Don't forget to use the search function under the top menu bar!

To interactively view case studies of management and impacts, click on the PIAT logo at the top left of the page.

At the bottom of every page, you'll find links to credits, copyright information, glossary, a site map and the story map.

Throughout the PIAT, technical terms you might not be familiar with are linked to the glossary. These links are identified with italic text, for example: biosecurity. When you click on the link, the glossary information will appear in a new browser window.

The PIAT is best viewed on a large screen to make the most of large sized images. If you are using a small screen, these images don't resize, so reducing the 'zoom' in your browser settings can make it easier to view the site.

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History and background of the PIAT

The PIAT was developed by Pacific Biosecurity of Victoria University of Wellington as part of a Partnerships in International Development project funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the New Zealand Aid Programme.

The project, called "Building resilience to biosecurity threats from invasive ants throughout the Pacific" runs from 2015-2019 and has the goal to increase capacity to deal with invasive ants throughout the Pacific.

Although Pacific Biosecurity leads the project and has collated or developed the resources you'll find here, building the PIAT would not be possible without the support and contributions of the in-country and regional agency partners SPC, SPREP, Tokelau EDNREKiribati MELAD and Pacific Invasives Initiative. As well as the partners, many people and  organisations around the Pacific helped create the toolkit, either directly by providing information, samples, images and other resources, or indirectly through their outreach and science work.

Where possible the PIAT was designed to reflect the SPREP/SPC Guidelines for Invasive Species Management in the Pacific. These guidelines were the basis from which the IUCN Guidelines for Invasive Species Planning and Management on Islands were developed. 

The PIAT is a 'living' resource, which means that it will be continually updated and refined by Pacific Biosecurity between 2016 - 2019. After that our regional agency partners, SPREP and SPC, will take over guardianship of the PIAT.

Next page: Problem ants