First player advantage?

Here is my first topic about my game, and especially the fact that the first player (maybe?) has an advantage. I'm not sure how to fix it. First, let me explain the way of the game.
(Explaining in English is hard, I hope it is clear!)

The game is a race. You play an ant willing to get back to his home/nest/colony. The board has a 'Start' place at the bottom and then spaces going from 1 till 20, 20 is the 'End' space. There are 2 routes going to the end: the fast route over the river (more 'danger') or the slower route over the grass (more benefits).

I try to put a picture in here of a part of the board so you can see. Yeah, the board is to small for the ant-pieces but it works for play-testing (when we use small pawns and little wooden cubes).

On the grass side of the board, there will be cards specifying what will happen on the spaces (on the picture I put on 2, but normally it will be filled up). Like: find nectar (for moving), find a tool (useful to bully other players), find an ant (called ‘friends’ – worth 2 points in the end) or greenfly (don’t know the right word in English, translator says “aphid”, which is a sort of lice the ants use and befriend, worth 1 point in the end), or something bad like meet a ladybug (which will force you to move to the river, so you have to roll 6 to move on). For the river, there is a ‘riverdeck’ with cards of the events happening on the spaces, which are kinda like 60/40 bad/good.

Your turn will be:
1) search: On the grass: Roll 2 dice (d6) and choose 1 to use. On the river: Roll 1 dice (d6).
1,2 or 3 rolled: you get ‘1 nectar’ (used for moving), 4 or 5 rolled: you get 2 nectar and rolled 6 you find a tool ór a leaf to go on the river (like a boat).
2) move: On the grass you can move up to 3 spaces, which cost 1 nectar for every space, ór go back up to 2 spaces, for 1 nectar, ór choose not to move and rest: receive 1 nectar and your turn is over. On the river you can move 3 spaces up for free, never go back.
3) discover: Find out what happens on your space. On the grass: Read the card. On the river: Take a card from the riverdeck. Follow the instructions.

End of the game: The game ends when a player reaches the ‘End’ space (he find the last ant-friend there for extra points) ór there can be end-spaces in the grass-cards to end the gamer sooner if you want (you need 2 ant-friends in possession to do so).
You get points for getting as far to the nest as possible, for every ant-friend and greenfly you’ve found.

So, that is the game, not going into all the details that can happen along the way.

The problem is, the ant-friends and greenfly’s you can find along the way. On the spaces indicated with ‘find friend’, there will be 1 ant-friend and 1 greenfly. The first player to come along, will take the ant-friend, the second player will get the greenfly. A third or fourth player will get nothing? And the first player, is he lucky with his nectar and cards, he will get ALL the ant-friends… It felt a bit unbalanced! Unfair, so to speak. But how to fix it? Must it be fixed? Or is it part of the game? Don’t know yet…

Maybe… give the not-starting players a benefit? Is that fair?
Or Maybe… refill the board after the greenfly is taken? How will that go on, will the second player just happily go backwards to take the new ant-friend also? Hmm… I don’t know. Kinda stuck.

And, of course the question; do you think this game sounds ok? Any ideas?