Purple Weed vs. Beetle

hondo77 writes "How do you deal with an invasive, non-native plant? With a non-native beetle. This AP article talks about the non-native purple loosestrife weed, which arrived in North America in the late 1800s, and how it has been choking out indigenous native plans. After a study at Cornell, the Galerucella beetle was introduced in 2000 as part of a pilot program in Massachusetts to keep the weed under control. 'From what we know, there's no downside.'"

Comments

do you hear that?

[Bishop]

From what we know, there's no downside.

Do you hear that? It is all of Australia laughing.

My neighbor

[MrIcee]

Hawai'i is home to some of the most unique species of plants and animal/insect/fish/etc life than can be found anywhere else on the planet.

Unfortunatly we are also home to some invasive alien species that threaten to kill and choke our natural life. One excellant example is the recent appearance of Coqui Frogs (read more) which came in on plants being imported for sales (go figure).

These little frogs (about the size of a nickel) are the loudest thing you have ever heard. At over 110 decibles per chirp there are no predators in Hawai'i for this creature and communities can grow as high as 20,000 to 40,000 per acre. You can imagine the din.

Furthermore, the coqui are eating insects that are normally eaten by our native creatures - which can upset the balance.

Hence my neighbor... coqui are moving into our neighborhood and the neighborhood association asked $44 from each person from which they would hire specialists to come and destroy the coqui (there are two effective methods, one a caffeine spray and the other a citric acid sollution spray - we have used the citric acid spray with great success).

My neighbor, a devout vegean is steadfast against it. Will not treat her coqui... "they have a right to live". Whereas, my response is... hey, man brought them in, man can bring them back out - to which she is very upset. (in the same token, she won't treat for termites, cockroaches, or rats either). Completely misses the point, as far as I can tell, that they are damaging OTHER species - nopers, THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO LIVE.

Ah well... I always maintained that eating vegetables was worse because they can't run and hide - and killing an entire field is akin to localized genocide.

Aloha nui loa

Re:Use of non-native species isn't always a disast

[rs79]

What I don't get is, we have tons of purple loosestrife and tons of bored teenagers with no job; these are the idealistic little twerps that want to save the planet. Is it just my imagination or could all bored teenagers make a serious dent in the loosestrife crop. What do we have to do, tell them they can get high off it? Cross it with Cannabis indica? Saaaaay.... now there's an idea.

I remove all the loosestrife from my little 2 acre strip of the river here each year. It's a tough plant to dig out.

There are places near here where you can see acres of this purple crap. Sure it's kinda cute but it does kill everything else that was growing there before and of course all the things that relied on what grew there before go somewhere else and the whole ecosystem is buggered up. You see more of it each year.