Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty...from pests

The quote "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, but most likely was first penned by Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist and defender of Native Americans' rights from Massachusetts.  The same quote could be applied accurately to the effort to keep our country free from disruptions caused by exotic pests.  Without continual vigilance, our country would be overrun (more than it already is) with exotic pests and new pest problems.

A recent five-kilo rice interception at DFW airport contained
evidence of khapra beetle, a notorious quarantine pest. Photo
by Customs and Border Protection.

This point came home to me again recently as I read one of the regular reports I receive from Morris Bigham, Chief Agriculture Specialist for Customs and Border Protection at the Dallas /Fort Worth International (DFW) airport.  Every month various pests are intercepted from the luggage of travelers at airports like DFW.  Mostly these folks are not nefarious smugglers, but average people who are either ignorant of the laws prohibiting transportation of foods and pest, or who think the law doesn't really apply to them.

Take just one example from the latest report:

"On February 06, 2012 a passenger arrived at DFW International Airport from India... The passenger was referred to agriculture secondary for inspection. The passenger did not declare any items of agriculture interest...and a verbal declaration was unattainable due to a language barrier. During the inspection of the passenger’s luggage, 5 kilograms [about 10 lbs] of rice was discovered. The rice was seized and quarantined for further inspected. Upon further inspection of the rice, a coleoptera [beetle] cast skin was found. Tentative identification of Trogoderma granarium [khapra beetle] was given for the cast skin. As a result, the specimen was forwarded to the local USDA Area Identifier for further identification. The rice was destroyed by steam sterilization. On February 29, 2012, final identification of the pest was received, confirming the tentative identification of Trogoderma granarium...a quarantine significant pest."

If you're like most people, you've probably never heard of khapra beetle, but it is one of the most destructive pests of stored grain in the world. According to Wikipedia, "infestations are difficult to control because of the insect's ability to survive without food for long periods, its preference for dry conditions and low-moisture food, and its resistance to many insecticides."  The only real protection we in the U.S. have from this beetle are the dedicated men and women charged with the behind-the-scenes task of inspecting luggage and shipped grain from overseas.  Last month at DFW airport alone USDA/APHIS intercepted 348 passenger and 45 cargoes with pest evidence.  It's amazing to me that with all the international travel that we have managed to keep khapra beetle, and many other pests like it, out of the country so long.

Perhaps it's stories like this that make me not laugh at stories people tell when they brag about how they smuggled something in from a foreign junket.  A sad (for me, because I like her as an actor) example of this occurred on the Tonight Show a couple of month ago. Guest Sandra Bullock let slip on the show that she had smuggled holiday sausage into the country as part of a family tradition. Of course it was all great fun, and the audience enjoyed the anecdote, but it left me feeling a little like listening to a joke about the antics of a drunk driver.  Pretty funny until you know someone who's an alcoholic, or who has lost a loved one from a drunk driving incident.

So as you're eating your whole grain cereal tomorrow think about those good folks from the Homeland Security agencies and the work they are doing to keep your breakfast affordable and pest free.

"If Kudzu wasn't bad enough"...and other thoughts on exotic pests

Dr. Dan Suiter and Lisa Ames with the University of Georgia just sent out a pest alert on an insect called the "bean plataspid". I had never heard of a plataspid (pla TASS pid) before, so I looked in my well-worn copy of "How to Know the True Bugs" by James Alexander Slater--a very useful book for relatives of the box elder bugs--but with no luck. A quick check of the Internet revealed that Plataspids are Old World insects--hence not covered by my U.S. field guide.

Suiter and Ames recently received numerous samples of these insects swarming around homes in Georgia. Homeowners there are being repelled by not only the numbers, but also by a foul smell associated with the bugs. Turns out that this was the first known collection of these insects, known scientifically as Megacopta cribraria in the U.S. It is native to India and China, where it feeds on kudzu.

At this point many Southerners can be heard shouting "Glory be! A bug that eats kudzu! An answer to our prayers!" If you are not from the South, or are unfamiliar with kudzu, it is an invasive plant nightmare. Originally introduced in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a Japanese government display garden. Planted widely as an ornamental vine for its abundant vegetation and sweet-smelling flowers, it was promoted as a forage plant by the Soil Conservation Service in the 1920s and 30s for erosion control. Bad idea. Kudzu smother trees and other plants under a solid blanket of leaves, by girdling woody stems and tree trunks, and by breaking branches or uprooting entire trees and shrubs through the sheer force of its weight. It grows at a rate of up to a foot a day.

Unfortunately for us, the bean plataspid does not appear to be a good solution to kudzu. Besides being a household pest on the order of the box elder bug or the Asian mulicolored lady beetle, the bean plataspid is a pest of numerous legume crops, including soybeans. The University of Georgia, Georgia Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Agriculture consider it a potential agricultural pest and are partnering to take some regulatory action.

This appears to be the latest assault against the native fauna in our country. It's bad enough to have a new structural pest stinking up our homes, but when a foreign insect crosses the border into the U.S. it's generally forever. The fire ant landed on the sandy bay shores of Mobile, Alabama about 80 years ago and forever altered the ecology of the southern pine forest to the Texas prairies. We still don't know the full impact of fire ants on native wildlife and plant life, not to mention the American economy.

Last week I attended a conference on invasive pests, put on by the Texas Invasive Plant and Pest Council, in San Antonio. If there was ever a more discouraging subject for a biologist, I don't know what it is. In one of the talks, a botanist talked about his efforts to catalog and classify all the invasive foreign plants in Texas. He proposed classifying certain plants as some pests as "super watch" plants. "Super watch" plants are those which might possibly be removed from the Texas landscape before they become impossible to control.

I think the concept is a useful one for insects. By classifying certain insects as "Potentially Eradicable" pests, or putting them on some sort of "Super Watch" list, we accept responsibility for going after these pests. It seems to me that under our current system we have little incentive to go after new pests before they can get established.

Take the Formosan termite. We continue to watch helplessly as this pest becomes established in new sites around the South and in Texas. The potential economic impact of the Formosan termite is staggering, as it is at least twice as destructive as our native subterranean termite on homes, and an eater of live trees as well.

Ironically this is one pest that, in my opinion, could be controlled in isolated infestations before it becomes firmly established. We have dozens of sites in Texas where the Formosan termite is established on one or a few home properties. A determined effort to eradicate colonies with termite baits has, in my opinion, a good chance of succeeding in nipping many of these mini-invasions in the bud.

So what does all this have to do with pest management professionals? Knowing where a pest is found and how fast it is spreading is important for decision makers to know whether and how an invasive pest might be eradicated. Suiter and Ames are requesting PMPs in Georgia to report any sightings of the bean plataspid there. Here in Texas we are requesting PMPs to report new sightings of the rasberry crazy ant and the Formosan termite. These reports are very important to us and often form the basis for research dollars to work on solutions for these pests.

I will be working with Drs. Roger Gold and Robert Puckett this year attempting to delineate precisely where Formosan termites are present in the state of Texas. The research is being funded by the Texas Department of Agriculture and USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. More information about the project will be forthcoming, but if you know of any suspected Formosan termite infestations we definitely want to know.

If only the Formosan termite could be coaxed into preferring kudzu.