After Spain, Italy, and 7 other French departments since 2006, the Azurean coast has been affected by the Red Palm Weevil since September 2009. In our country, specifically, about 1 million palm trees in France and more than 100,000 palm trees on the Côte d’Azur are currently threatened with extinction.
The palm tree is indeed the signature, image, and emblem of the Côte d’Azur, which hosts no less than 10 million visitors per year. Thousands of direct and indirect jobs are linked to the quality of its landscape and environment.
To date, the Red Palm Weevil and the Paysandisia Archon, the main predators now established with us, exert severe pressure on palm trees and biodiversity. It is therefore imperative to engage in an active and adapted fight conforming to the configuration and the constraints of each territory against these pests, which pose a proven danger to the image and the tourism economy of our territory as well as to the integrity of its plant, landscape, and cultural heritage.
To face this unprecedented challenge gravely impacting its landscape heritage, the city of Nice initiated, since the end of 2009, an intercommunal combat strategy, in transversal collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and major stakeholders, bringing together more than 35 municipalities and the Principality of Monaco with Nice as the pilot city. This dynamic and evolving intercommunal strategy is coordinated by the Azurean CRP COPIL.
It offers partner municipalities project engineering, has created a specific and shared GIS, and a unique and synchronized administrative and legal procedure (State/Copil/collectivities/TGI). Its comprehensive and global action on all fronts of the fight has enabled notable progress at local, national, and European levels, contributing to the recognition of an integrated combat method and an action plan for appropriate and synchronized implementation, across the concerned territory.
In 3 years (2009 to the end of 2012), the Azurean COPIL achieved:
Bringing together 35 willing municipalities (as of early 2013, 36 municipalities in the Alpes Maritimes + 5 Var municipalities) within an intercommunal combat strategy, as well as Monaco, beyond usual administrative borders for a coordinated and coherent combat strategy scaled to the threatened territory,
The development of new scientific and technical tools (a specific GIS, an experimental protocol for Beauveria bassiana across 22 municipalities, training of local government agents and volunteers, project engineering),
To evolve regulations, through transversal collaboration with the AMF, the Ministry of Agriculture, the TGIs (Grasse and Nice), the European Commission.
Indeed, to be effective, the strategy and combat plans against these pests and harmful organisms must take into account risks exacerbated by the flows (import/export) of palm trees related to palm trade, whether intra-community or from third countries, and be coordinated beyond the administrative limits of an agglomeration and beyond the boundaries between public domain and private properties. The difficulty in this context is therefore to adopt regulations adapted to the reality of these various configurations.
The figures revealed by the census of existing palm trees (100,000 palm trees) on the territory of COPIL partner municipalities provide a concrete idea of the key economic stakes for each territory.
The record from 2009 to the end of 2012 is enlightening, of course, it was a first step, but it points the right path to follow through its deterrent effect, as of December 31, 2012, for 421 notifications sent on 17 infested municipalities, 4 initial contradictory findings were decided and carried out in July 2012 resulting in 100% implementation of the mandatory combat measures, by delinquent owners inspected. No prosecution had to be initiated.
To date, there are 22 contaminated municipalities (see prefectural order of March 14, 2013) + Monaco, approximately 1,172 affected palm trees, including 1,100 located on the main site of the Antibes/Vallauris area (with a heritage of 100,000 Azurean palm trees). The situation is not easy, but there is no choice but to remain more than ever mobilized, to be reactive and to hold firm.
