New Invasive Insects Pose Threats To American Forests

[hatrack]

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"'Invasive species are a real threat to the nation's forests,' said Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, at a recent conference in New Orleans. 'There are so many things, it just seems too big to talk about. Like a slow-moving fire, they're going everywhere.'

In the past 150 years, fungus-based diseases known as chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease have virtually wiped out the American chestnut and American elm. These days, scientists point to dozens of newer invaders, from the well-known European gypsy moth to the newly discovered emerald ash borer.

'We're seeing plague after plague come in,' said Faith Campbell, head of the invasive species program at the American Lands Alliance and co-author of two definitive reports on the loss of the nation's forests.

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Consider the emerald ash borer, a deadly exotic beetle from Asia discovered for the first time in the United States last year. Raupp described the insect as 'the biggest threat to our natural forest, in my opinion, since chestnut blight.' 'It kills every ash it sees, from the healthiest to the weakest. It has the potential to basically eliminate ash trees as a component of our natural forest stands here,' Raupp said. "

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[amazona]

1. I have lost all hope

An ornithologist predicted in the early 1990s that we would see the end of migration in our lifetime, and I believe we will see the end of true forests as well. There will always be junk pine forests that do not support much of our birdlife and other wildlife and wild plants but the problem as a whole seems too big for us. Apparently it is more important to have "rush shipping" of cheap crap from China in time for Christmas than it is to have our forests. I'm at the point where my attitude is, enjoy them now, because we're going to outlive them.



the forest i hiked in Alaska in the 70s is already dead

[phaseolus]

2. Speaking of migration --

What's that bird that migrates from one polar region to the other, and back again, every year??

I remember reading a while ago that they were in danger because their critical food source in Chesapeake Bay, horseshoe crab eggs, was in danger because of *one* stupid greedy redneck who was overharvesting horseshoe crabs to sell as fish bait. Heard any news about that situation??

[hatrack]

3. I believe you're thinking of the Arctic tern

I'm not up to speed on the horseshoe crab situation, however.

They've become popular not only for fish bait, but also for (I belive) hemoglobin studies in biotech. The process means that crabs are captured, taken to the lab and drained of some of their blood (which is blue, btw), then returned to the beach. No word yet of long-term effects on crab populations from this practice.