Exotic insects and diseases that attack plants can be very destructive and cost millions of dollars to fight. Just ask those cities fighting the invasion of the emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorned beetle. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports… a recent study looks at where new potential pests are coming from:
Transcript
Exotic insects and diseases that attack plants can be very destructive and
cost millions of dollars to fight. Just ask those cities fighting the
invasion of the emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorned beetle. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports… a recent
study looks at where new potential pests are coming from:
Inspectors at airports, ports and borders nab between 40 and 60 thousand
different potential plant pests each year. That’s according to a study in
the journal, Biological Invasions.
Author Deb McCullough says global trade is leading to an increase in the
number of non-native insects and diseases that could become problems.
“China in particular which has become one of our major trading
partners…most of the kinds of climate that you’ll find in China, you’ll
find somewhere here in the U.S., and there’s really an awful lot of
opportunities for exotic insects to become established here.”
McCullough says it’s hard to estimate how many new potential pests
could be slipping past inspectors. She says at best, inspectors go through
just 2% of agricultural cargo coming into the U.S. each year.
For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.