Decades of IUCN recommendations for biocontrol of invasive pest on the Guam cycad: you can lead policy-makers to conservation proposals but you cannot make them follow

Abstract

Guam’s cycad known as Cycas micronesica has been threatened by a coalition of invasive herbivore species, and the armored scale Aulacaspis yasumatsui has emerged as the primary threat. This lethal cycad pest invaded Guam in 2003, and the Species Survival Council of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) began publishing recommendations addressing protection of the cycad population in 2005. Sustained epidemic mortality caused the addition of C. micronesica to the United States Endangered Species Act in 2015. The need to establish a sustainable coalition of biological control organisms has been the constant advice throughout almost two decades of recommendations, yet the decision-makers who controlled the direction of policy and funding have not responded to the advice with success. Therefore, we describe the history of publications in which the IUCN has asserted that this singular conservation action is urgently required to save the cycad species. We then summarize contemporary recommendations to address the ongoing threats to this and other insular cycad species.