Invasive Bugs Still on the March

  • Adult emerald ash borer (Photo by David Cappaert, Michigan State University, courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)

The emerald ash borer is still chewing its way through the state’s ash trees.

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

The emerald ash borer is a very expensive pest. It’s an invasive beetle from Asia that was first discovered eight years ago, near Detroit. It has killed more than 50 million ash trees just in Michigan alone. The beetle has also infested 13 other states and two Canadian provinces, and it has cost the state of Michigan millions of dollars.

That’s your tax money, and you might have also had to pay to have dead trees removed from your own yard.



More information on the invasive bugs


How to identify the bugs and larvae

A related TER story

Transcript

Deb McCullough is here with me and she’s a professor of forest entomology at Michigan State University.

What’s the prognosis for Michigan’s ash trees?

“We’ve lost a lot and we’re going to lose even more. For example, Lansing and East Lansing – we’re right in the thick of it now, lots of dying trees, trees that died either last year, this year or will be dying in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, Grand Rapids had some infestations get started and they’re seeing a lot more dead and dying trees and it’s kind of rolling from the west to the east out of Grand Rapids. All these pockets that got started by firewood that was transported or infested ash nursery trees back before anybody knew about emerald ash borer. There are pockets of emerald ash borer in places like Traverse City and over by Alpena and Alcona County. We know that there are a number of localized and very spotty kinds of infestations in the Upper Peninsula as well.”


How much success do you believe that scientists like yourself, city managers, other people who are working on this… how much success have you had in slowing the beetle’s spread?


“I don’t know that we’re working really hard on that. I think the funding is pretty limited in terms of slowing the spread of the main infestations. The one area where we are trying some different approaches to slow the rate of the beetle in terms of its population growth and possibly to slow the spread is a pilot project that is underway in the Upper Peninsula to try to use a combination of insecticides and girdled ash trees and some targeted ash removals and harvests and so forth to slow the rate that the population spreads and slow down the progression of ash mortality out of these spots.”


So we’re in camping season now and moving infested firewood is one of the biggest ways we’ve been spreading the beetle. What do we need to know about moving firewood this summer?


“I do a lot of camping and we go fishing and we go hunting and in years past I always took firewood with me and I don’t do it anymore. It’s one of those things where we’re all just going to have to change our behavior because there are many of these outlier spots of emerald ash borer that we know got started from infested ash firewood that people took to an area. They left it. They didn’t burn it. The beetles came out and it only takes a couple of beetles to get a whole new infestation started. ”


“It’s illegal, you’re not allowed to take firewood across the Mackinac Bridge from Lower Michigan into Upper Michigan. You can’t take firewood across the southern border of Michigan. So we’re really asking people to get their firewood locally. A lot of times you can collect it locally or you can buy it from a supplier and just not start any more problems like these.”

Deb McCullough is a forest entomologist at Michigan State University. Thank you so much for talking with us.

“Okay, thank you.”

And that’s The Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

The Incredible, Edible Weed

  • People brought Garlic Mustard to the US in the mid-1800s because they liked it, to eat. And they even used it for medicine.(Photo courtesy of the NBII, Elizabeth A. Sellers)

An invasive plant called Garlic Mustard is taking over forests in the Eastern half of the country, and it could be causing long term damage. Julie Grant reports that some people are getting smart in their efforts to get rid of Garlic Mustard:

Transcript

An invasive plant called Garlic Mustard is taking over forests in the Eastern half of the country, and it could be causing long term damage. Julie Grant reports that some people are getting smart in their efforts to get rid of Garlic Mustard:

Brad Steman spends a lot of time in the woods. He likes the serenity. But as we walk through this park, he winces. The entire forest floor is carpeted with one plant and one plant only: Garlic Mustard. Thousands of them. The thin green stalks are as tall as our ankles.

Steman calls it “the evil weed.” Its triangle-shaped leaves shade out wildflowers, so they don’t grow. Even worse, Steman says Garlic Mustard poisons baby trees.

“So a forest filled with Garlic Mustard you will see very little regeneration of that forest, very few seedlings, small trees. So looking down the line, once those large trees start dying off there’s nothing to replace them. And that now is the greatest threat to our Eastern forests.”

Steman says every year Garlic Mustard is spreading farther into the woods. Anywhere the ground is disturbed.

“So here’s a big stand of it along a trail. This is typically where it starts. This is thick. This is a healthy stand. There’s potential there for an explosion. So we should probably pull some. I’ll pull some; you don’t have to pull any.”

Thank goodness he’s doing it – it looks like tedious work. Steman crouches down and starts pulling them out of the ground, roots and all. He sprayed herbicide on some of it, and so far this season he’s filled 35 big garbage bags with Garlic Mustard plants. He’s sick of weeding. But it doesn’t look like he’s made a dent here. All along the Eastern half of the US and Canada people are pulling up Garlic Mustard from parks and just throwing it away. But some people don’t like this approach.

“All these people are very shortsighted when they’re doing that.”

Peter Gail is a specialist in edible weeds.

“They’re not looking for other alternative uses – creative ways to use these plants that would be profitable, that would be productive.”

Gail says: “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.” People brought Garlic Mustard to the US in the mid-1800s because they liked it, to eat. And they even used it for medicine. Yep. That same nasty weed.

Gail says today Garlic Mustard just needs an image makeover. Some weeds have become big stars in the cooking world. A few years ago Purselane was just an unwanted vine, with its fleshy, shiny leaves matted to the ground. Now it’s known as a nutritional powerhouse, and is the darling of New York and LA eateries. Gail wants that kind of fame for Garlic Mustard.

“This is a Garlic Mustard Ricotta dip, Garlic Mustard salsa, stuffed Garlic Mustard leaves – these are all things you can do with this stuff. It’s fantastic!”

Garlic Mustard seeds taste like mustard, the leaves taste like garlic and the roots are reminiscent of horseradish. Gail says people should go after Garlic Mustard in the parks, but then they should take it to farm markets to sell.

“My normal statement is that the best way to demoralize weeds is to eat them. Because when you eat them they know you like them and they don’t want to be there anymore, and so they leave.”

Today Gail decides to blend a pesto using the early spring leaves. He picks every last Garlic Mustard in his yard to make a batch.

“Well there it is, garlic mustard pesto. And it isn’t bad, is it?”

“It’s delicious.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

“I’ll use that on ravioli tonight.”

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Deer Birth Control

  • Gardiner Joe Williamson says sterilization does nothing to solve the immediate problem of too many deer. (Photo courtesy of Adam Allington)

Whitetail deer have adapted pretty well to the suburbs. But… it means a lot of car-deer accidents. It also means deer munching on tulips and shrubs. Some people consider them pests and want to get rid of the deer. But instead of simply killing them, one city has decided to capture and sterilize a number of does.
Adam Allington reports, the results might point toward the future of urban wildlife management.

Transcript

Whitetail deer have adapted pretty well to the suburbs.

But… it means a lot of car-deer accidents. It also means deer munching on tulips and shrubs. Some people consider them pests and want to get rid of the deer.

But instead of simply killing them, one city has decided to capture and sterilize a number of does.

Adam Allington reports, the results might point toward the future of urban wildlife management.

It’s a crisp night in Town and Country, Missouri…home to some 10,000 souls…and about 800 deer.

“There goes a deer over there, it’s just to the left of the tree, you can barely see it.”

Joel Porath is a wildlife regional supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Just like humans, whitetails he says, are right at home in the quiet cul du sacs of suburbia.

“They have all the food resources, they don’t have hunting and they don’t really have predators, so mainly vehicles are what kill them in communities like this.”

Lynn Wright sits on Town and Country’s board of aldermen. Despite the accidents she says most folks like seeing the deer around…kind of reminding them that they don’t live in the city.

“But when you start going from 2 or 3 and seeing 10 or 12 in the backyard you do start getting concerned about that.”

The car accidents were a problem, but Wright says people also complained about damaged trees and landscaping. Still, the town resisted the easiest solution—to just hire sharpshooters to come in and kill all the deer.

Instead, they explored alternative methods…this is sound from a department of conservation video…it shows four deer eating corn in a back yard…just then, a large dropnet is released…sending them into a flailing frenzy until technicians rush in with tranquilizer shots.

The deer are then brought to Steve Timm. Timm is a veterinarian with White Buffalo Incorporated. Its a company that specializes in sterilizing deer.

“We’ve got two does coming in. We’re going to sterilize them by removing ovaries.”

Timm operates out of a small eight by sixteen foot trailer… When the does arrive they’re hoisted on to an operating table and prepped for surgery.

“I’ve located the left ovary here, and so I’ll clamp it, bring it to the surface, use cautery to prevent any bleeding.”

The whole process takes about 20 minutes. The deer are then stapled up, fitted with reflective collars and released.

Timm says the theory is simple—fewer fauns mean less deer eating shrubs and running into cars.

“The early information suggests, that if there are some deer in the environment, especially our sterile does, the other deer have less tendency to move in.”

But not everyone backs the sterilization approach.

Joe Williamson is a retiree who loves to garden. Walking around his yard he points out flowering magnolias, yews, Japanese maples…basically, a kind of all-night deer buffet.

“This is a good example of antler rubs, this is called Staghorn Sumac. The bucks rub their antlers on here and they break them off, you see all these…its just wrecked.”

Williamson says sterilization does nothing to solve the immediate problem of too many deer. It’s also much more expensive. Town and Country paid White Buffalo 150-thousand dollars to sterilize 112 does, and kill another 100.

But, Joel Porath of the Department of Conservation says in the end, the best solution may involve sterilizing some deer…and killing others.

“Could you imagine if we stopped allowing deer hunting in the state? You know we kill around 300,000 dear each year and it doesn’t take very long for the population to jump back up. So, they do need to continue to do something in Town and Country down the road.”

By the end of spring Porath says the department should have enough information to see if sterilization makes sense for other suburban areas.

For The Environment Report, I’m Adam Allington.

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Flushing Out Unwanted Stowaways

  • A ship shown emptying its ballast tanks. (Photo courtesy of the United States Geological Survey)

Invasive species like the zebra mussel
have spread into lakes and rivers across
the country. But scientists are cautiously
optimistic they’re on the right track
to closing the front door to new invaders.
David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

Invasive species like the zebra mussel
have spread into lakes and rivers across
the country. But scientists are cautiously
optimistic they’re on the right track
to closing the front door to new invaders.
David Sommerstein reports:

Most invasive species have snuck into American waters by hitchhiking in the ballast water of foreign ships. They cause billions of dollars of damage to economies and ecosystems.

Researcher David Reid keeps the official list of invasive species in the Great Lakes. He’s with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He says a new invader hasn’t been found there since 2006, a period of three years.

“The last time that occurred in our records was in the 1950s.”

Reid has his fingers crossed.

A new rule requires ships to flush their ballast out in the ocean before entering American waters. Reid says it seems to be working.

“We’ve found that saltwater is really quite effective against most of types of organisms that are likely to survive fresh water.”

The invasive species problem is far from over. Researchers are testing out technology to kill critters that can live in saltwater, too.

For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.

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Bedbugs Booming

  • Complaints to pest control firms about bedbugs have tripled in 4 years. (Photo courtesy of the CDC)

The US is suffering through a
resurgence of bedbugs and the itchy
welts their bites cause. So now,
some health officials are asking
the Federal EPA to bring back an
old pesticide. Bill Cohen reports:

Transcript

The US is suffering through a
resurgence of bedbugs and the itchy
welts their bites cause. So now,
some health officials are asking
the Federal EPA to bring back an
old pesticide. Bill Cohen reports:

Complaints to pest control firms about bedbugs have tripled in 4 years.

Two reasons. More people are scavenging infested mattresses thrown out on the street. Plus, the bugs are getting resistant to current pesticides.

That’s why Ohio is asking the feds to let home exterminators use propoxur. Red tape and questions over possible side effects like nausea shelved the pesticide years ago, but local health official Paul Wenning fears, without it, frustrated itchy homeowners will turn to more dangerous weapons to fight the bugs.

“Our greatest fear is that someone is going to get ahold of some old pesticide – like DDT or something – are going to treat their house, and we’re going to have a lot of very sick and possibly dead people.”

Ohio expects other states will join the drive to bring back propoxur.

For The Environment Report, I’m Bill Cohen.

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Diversity in Urban Forestry

  • Forest researchers say cities need to plant different kinds of trees. Many cities plant only a handful of species. (Photo courtesy of the US Forest Service)

Urban forest researchers say cities
need different kinds of trees. Having
too many of the same kind of trees
encourages pests. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Urban forest researchers say cities
need different kinds of trees. Having
too many of the same kind of trees
encourages pests. Lester Graham reports:

Pests have already wiped out native trees such as chestnuts, elms and now ash.

James Kielbaso is a forester with Michigan State University. He says native trees are great but, one of his students has found some cities are too reliant on them.

“An urban tree population should not consist of any more than ten or fifteen percent of any one species. He’s finding the trees that are most over-used tend to be our native trees.”

In some cases, maples make up 30% of a city’s trees. That means if a disease or a pest hits maples, a city could lose a third of its urban forest.

Kielbaso says people should plant tree species not already in the neighborhood and a few hardy foreign species could help diversify a city forest.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Tiny Pest Threatens the Las Vegas Lights

  • Hoover Dam's backside stretches more than 700 feet from top to bottom, but the dam's seeing trouble from the tiny aquatic zebra mussel. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Hoover Dam generates some of the power that lights Las Vegas all night long. But there’s something
that’s making that job a bit more difficult. Shawn Allee found out, it’s a tiny aquatic pest:

Transcript

Hoover Dam generates some of the power that lights Las Vegas all night long. But there’s something
that’s making that job a bit more difficult. Shawn Allee found out, it’s a tiny aquatic pest:

The usual tour of Hoover Dam starts at the visitor’s center – way at the top.

Robert Walsh works with the federal agency that runs Hoover.

He says, go ahead – look over the edge.

Allee: “OK. That’s creepy. Seriously, that’s creepy.”

Walsh: “It’s spooky. Are you afraid of heights?”

Allee: “No, they don’t bother me at all.”

The dam stretches down 700 feet, and it holds an enormous reservoir – Lake Mead.

This tour is awesome, but Walsh says there’s another tour, too.

It’s, um, NOT so awesome.

It’s all about the trouble the tiny quagga mussel is causing Hoover and other nearby dams.

To get that tour, Walsh takes me to Leonard Willet.

Allee: “Where are we right now?”

Willet: “It’s kind of a work station where all the quagga mussel control activities take place
for Hoover Dam.”

Allee: “It’s quagga mussel central for this area?”

Willet: “Exactly.”

Willet first heard quagga mussels were growing in the nearby Lake Mead reservoir in 2007.

He called an expert for advice.

“First thing out of her mouth was, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ I knew it was a lot more serious.
And I asked her what we’re in for.”

Willet learned quickly enough – quagga mussels attach to nearly anything underwater.

He shows me a sandal that was in water – and is smothered in them.

They’re like clams the size of your pinky fingernail.

“We went from zero to THAT in seven months.”

And that’s the problem.

Hoover Dam uses water from Lake Mead to spin generators.

The water moves around in pipes – and quagga mussels can attach to them – just like on that sandal.

Allee: “What does that mean in a real practical sense?”

Willet: “Our intake towers would close off. Once you start closing off, you can’t spin the
generators. That’s just kind of the big view of it.”

Zero power generation.

That’s the worst-case scenario. It hasn’t happened – but it’s a fight to prevent it.

“Now, we’re going to go down to the third floor, which is the generator floor.”

The generators are inside broad metal cylinders.

Big water pipes turn the generators. Smaller ones cool them off.

“Well, we circulate cold water from those pipes. If those start to plug up with mussels, then
you can’t keep a generator cool, if those … it shuts down due to overheating.”

Right now, it takes a lot of scraping to keep everything clear.

All this effort’s adding up – Willet says he’ll spend 2 million dollars soon on new equipment.

Even with that, Willet is still a bit jittery about some pipes outside, at the very bottom of the dam.

“The one that’s probably the scariest of all is, we have a fireline that runs around here.
Mussels love it. Then, your firelines, when they’re needed, are plugged with mussels. So
that’s another area you have to really be careful of, safety-wise.”

This didn’t have to happen.

Quagga mussels invaded eastern rivers and the Great Lakes first.

Experts figure the mussels hitched a ride West on someone’s fishing boat.

Apparently – someone didn’t clean their boat properly – and mussels dropped into Lake Mead.

Allee: “When they built this amazing structure during the Depression, do you think they had
any idea that something like this could ever happen?”

Willet: “I think there was a lot of disagreement among professionals that a little mussel the
size of your finger nail could impact a large hydro facility, but we’re quickly learning a bunch
of them can impact water and power delivery.”

Willet says if boaters aren’t careful – they’ll spread quagga mussels to the Pacific Northwest, where
there’re lots of dams and hydro power plants.

After all, if it can happen at mighty Hoover Dam – it could happen anywhere.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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EPA Rules on Pesticide Residue

  • One crop that Carbofuran was used on is potatoes (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)

The Environmental Protection Agency says no amount of the pesticide carbofuran is safe on food. Mark Brush has more on the new EPA rule:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency says no amount of the pesticide carbofuran is safe on food. Mark Brush has more on the new EPA rule:

The EPA has been phasing out this insecticide, but it’s still used on some crops like rice, corn, and potatoes.

When people are exposed to carbofuran, it can cause damage to the nervous system. And the EPA is particularly worried about kids exposure when eating food or when drinking water near treated farm fields.

Potato farmers say they use carbofuran to kill bugs that resist other pesticides.

John Keeling is the CEO of the National Potato Council. He says they were hoping the EPA would let them keep using it.

“We had tried to work with the agency to modify use patterns, or limit the use to particular areas, so that we could continue to use the product – but they obviously didn’t continue in that direction.”

FMC Corporation makes the chemical. Officials there issued a statement saying they’ll fight the EPA’s new rule.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Insecticide Chemical Is a Powerful Greenhouse Gas

  • Sulfuryl flouride, a chemical used to fumigate termite-infested buildings, is a potent greenhouse gas (Source: Esculapio at Wikimedia Commons)

The federal government is going to take some significant steps to reduce global warming gases. Carbon dioxide is the main target, but there are other types of greenhouse gases. Lester Graham spoke with one researcher who found a potent greenhouse gas lingers in the atmosphere much longer than previously thought:

Transcript

We hear a lot about carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. But there are other chemicals that trap heat and contribute to global warming. One of them is an insecticide used to fumigate termite-infested buildings. It’s called Sulfuryl fluoride. That insecticide is four-thousand times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. It’s been estimated that Sulfuryl flouride hangs around in the atmosphere for five years or so… but new research shows that it lasts a lot longer than that:

Mads Sulbaek Anderson is working with other researchers at the University of California-Irvine published a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

He’s with us now… first, how is this termite insecticide used?

“Well, it’s used in a number of applications. What the fumigators do is, they basically cover the house in a giant tent. And then you fill up the house with this compound, and over the span of a few days, one or two days, this compound acts like a pesticide- it kills all of these bugs. After that time span, you remove the tent, and make sure that all of this compound evaporates and dissipates.”

What did you discover about how long this insecticide actually stays in the atmosphere?

“The usual routes by which pollution is removed from the atmosphere has to do with reactions, and there’s something called an OH radical, a hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere. That’s the usual cleaner of the atmosphere. In this case, this radical didn’t react at all with the compound – we couldn’t detect anything.”

Is this a significant contributor to global warming, or greenhouse gases?

“It’s still a question of how much is actually present in the atmosphere right now. But, we know how much is used every year of this compound. And so this compound, right, it’s 4,000 times more efficient in trapping the heat compared to carbon dioxide. But of course, there’s not much of it out in the atmosphere yet. But it’s more a precautionary tale, because other compounds are being phased out for other reasons and so sulfuryl fluoride could take over for those applications, if we don’t think twice about this. And it stays around for at least a few decades. So, it’s not an enormous problem by itself- we have to focus on the real problem, which of course is due to emissions from burning fossil fuels. But this compound too contributes to the warming of the atmosphere, or could potentially do it.”

Mads Sulbaek Anderson is a researcher at the University of California-Irvine. Thank you.

“You are very much welcome.”

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Weevils vs. The Mile-A-Minute Weed

  • The mile-a-minute weed (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Sometimes biologists fight foreign
pests with other foreign animals. But that
can be risky because it can create a bigger
problem than the one it’s supposed to solve.
Sabri Ben-Achour reports on one of the latest attempts to stop a weedy pest:

Transcript

Sometimes biologists fight foreign
pests with other foreign animals. But that
can be risky because it can create a bigger
problem than the one it’s supposed to solve.
Sabri Ben-Achour reports on one of the latest attempts to stop
a weedy pest:

On farms, backyards, and rights of way up the Eastern Seaboard a pointy leaved thorny
newcomer is becoming increasingly visible. It’s called mile-a-minute weed.

Bob Trumbule is an entomologist. He leads me through a stream valley north of
Washington DC where blackberries and small trees are being swallowed up by this
invasive vine.

“So now we’re getting into the mile-a-minute here. Basically what it does it, it’s an
annual vine, it grows up and over plants, it smothers them, out competes them for
sunlight, and weighs them down.”

The weed is native to Eastern Asia: China and Japan. It was introduced accidentally in
Pennsylvania in the thirties. From there, it’s spread to seven other states. It prevents new
trees from sprouting in forests. But back in Asia, it’s not a dominating species like it is
here.

Judith Hough-Goldstein is a professor at the University of Delaware.

“Part of the reason is because it doesn’t have anything that’s feeding on it. It’s gonna be
without its predators so it can out-compete other plants.”

Over several years, biologists searched for something that would eat the vine. They
found a tiny, black weevil in China. It feeds on the plant and lays it’s eggs there, keeping
things in check – in Asia.

“Here are the weevils. I’m gonna give you a glimpse of them here in the cup. They look
almost like little ticks. I’m gonna put them down here in the mile a minute weed patch,
and basically what they’ll do – they’re tough little guys – they’ll climb around and in the
past experience have started to feed almost immediately.”

Up close, they look like little anteaters, poking around the leaves with long snouts.

This may sound risky. There are lots of examples where similar approaches have gone
wrong. A parasite was introduced in North America to control gypsymoths. It attacked
native silkmoths. Mississippi catfish farmers used Asian carp to control algae. They got
loose and are taking over the Mississippi River system and threatening the Great Lakes.

And Trumbule admits nobody knows for sure exactly what might happen.

“Any scientist that might say otherwise is not being honest with themselves or the person
asking the question.”

But he says a lot’s been learned since the days when any scientist could introduce a
species on a whim. These days, exhaustive testing and federal permits are required
before anything is released.

That’s why for almost ten years Judith Hough-Goldstein has been trying to determine if
the weevil would eat anything else. Tests were conducted in a U.S. Department of
Agriculture ‘quarantine facility’ with sealed windows and its own re-circulated air supply.

“So what we found was that, in fact, this particular weevil is extremely host specific. The
insect has evolved to depend on the plant.”

So much so that the weevils and larvae actually starved to death rather than feed on other
plants.

In field tests in New Jersey and Delaware, the weevils have decimated mile-a-minute
weed. Some researchers say it’s the most impressive biocontrol they’ve worked with.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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