After spending the last two summers fighting against the Asian long horned beetle, government agriculture officials say the Great Lakes region remains threatened by a group of invasive species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jesse Hardman reports:
Transcript
After spending the last two summers fighting against the Asian long
horned beetle…government agriculture officials say the Great
Lakes region remains threatened by invasive species. The great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jesse Hardman reports.
U.S. agriculture deputy secretary Richard Rominger says
the appearance of gypsy moths in the Great Lakes Region, an insect which
kill trees and plants by consuming their leaves, is this summers
biggest worry.
“Gypsy moths will eat the leaves off the
trees they probably start with the oak trees the like those, then they’ll
eat anything including the shrubbery in your yard. In the last year gypsy
moths defoliated at least a million acres in Michigan. So that’s the
potential.”
Rominger says other invasive species they’re battling include the
round goby…an aggressive fish which is competing with fish in Lake
Michigan for habitat…and the purple loose strife, a plant which
grows quickly and crowds out surrounding plants.
Agriculture officials say they will experiment with different
programs aimed at controlling invasive species…including the use of
other exotics that prey on the problem species.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jesse Hardman.