Feasibility Assessment: An Essential Eradication Tool

Eradication and control are two distinct pest management approaches. Control aims to reduce pest impacts to acceptable levels but requires ongoing investment. If funding or support declines, results can quickly be lost. Eradication is a one-off, time-limited campaign to remove every individual from a population within a defined area. When achievable, acceptable, and sustainable (i.e., feasible), it offers permanent gains without ongoing control. Globally, pest eradication success rates on islands are high, particularly for invasive rodents (>90%). Failures still occur, commonly through inadequate or incomplete planning. Lessons from decades of eradication projects show success depends on thorough preparation, realistic funding, robust management, and a clear understanding of site conditions, pest ecology, and potential risks. Best practice guidelines, refined through experience, help reduce failure risk and make complex projects possible. The New Zealand Department of Conservation's Island Eradication Advisory Group (IEAG) has distilled lessons into a practical planning package that includes a feasibility assessment. The feasibility assessment template is a framework, not a rigid formula, built around approximately 40 targeted questions addressing project context, rationale, technical achievability, sustainability, social acceptance, and required resources. By identifying dependencies, planning issues, knowledge gaps, and risks, a feasibility assessment gives decision-makers a clear picture of what the best chance of success will require. It is helpful for eradication and control projects (socially, ecologically, and technically simple and complex), by supporting informed investment, building stakeholder confidence, and helping avoid costly false starts. While designed for use early in the planning cycle, it can also be used to review established projects. Rather than limiting ambition, it makes challenges transparent and ambition credible.