I've been handling it about as well as I can personally, mostly through trying to take care of the creatures that are there. Some of them are Poison-typed and immune to it, but...

[...but slowpokes everywhere, basically.]

As for this idea regarding competition and rivalry, it seems that it would be counterproductive...? It's possible that it's just because I'm not used to such things; I'm used to encouraging cooperation rather than rivalry, so I'm not entirely sure what that would be accomplishing.