Continued funding for Asian Hornet Strategy secured

Saturday 21 May 2022

The Committee for the Environment & Infrastructure has agreed to continue funding the Asian Hornet Strategy on an ongoing basis considering its successes over the past three years.

The Committee is satisfied with the effectiveness of the current Strategy, and now a long-term management approach is being adopted to continue keeping the invasive non-native species out of the Bailiwick.

The aim of the Strategy is to minimise the population of Asian hornets and to reduce their risk to the public and the island’s biodiversity. Without a coordinated control programme, Asian hornets would become established and widespread across the island within a just few years.

Asian hornets have established in high numbers across several European countries, including France and Spain. Professional agencies in France recorded 4,139 Asian hornet nests across the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy in 2021.

The total annual nest destruction costs for France are estimated at £9.8M while in Guernsey the costs of removing nests could amount to £201,500 per year if hornet density was allowed to reach levels comparable to those in Normandy. 

It is believed if this happened it would be virtually impossible to eradicate them. Given that, the Committee will fund the Strategy each year on an ongoing basis after it was initially introduced as a 3-year project. 

Pictured: Guernsey's approach to the invasive species has been highly successful. 

Guernsey’s Asian Hornet Strategy has received international recognition, including from the British Irish Council. The approach of island-wide trapping of Asian hornet queens in the spring has proved to be successful in reducing the number of secondary nests and preventing the establishment of the species. 

Earlier this year, a detailed review concluded that all the objectives of Guernsey’s Asian Hornet Strategy had been met and that the Strategy had been a success in a number of key areas:

• Through a combination of spring trapping, public surveillance, and nest detection and destruction, Asian hornet populations have been successfully maintained at such low levels that they are not considered to be established in Guernsey; 
• The rapid nest detection and carefully controlled destruction methods have minimised the risk to the public and the pest technician; 
• The communication and coordination across the other islands in the Bailiwick have ensured that all of the islands are adopting the same approaches in this important work. 

The full review and a summary document are available HERE.