Pests and the Public Pt 2

Pests and the Public Pt 2

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson with today’s Fruit Grower Report. The Washington Department of Agriculture is sending a big thank you to all the good folks out there who report the sighting of invasive pests.

WSDA pest program manager Greg Haubrich says it really helps when folks are on the lookout and reporting what they see …

HAUBRICH … “Exactly, and the capacity to do that has really grown over the last several years. In Washington, the Invasive Species Council has an app that you can put on your phone for reporting various inspect pests, and we’re not talking about just Asian Giant Hornets or Japanese Beetle, but we get a lot of other things turned into us as well.”

Invasive pest or not, Haubrich says, it’s just better to make sure …

HAUBRICH … “We’re always happy for people to submit samples or photographs to us of pests or something they’ve seen that maybe they don’t recognize in that area because by having all those extra sets of eyes out there, we’re much more effective at being able to, again, detect these things early and hopefully be able to address them and mitigate them in a much more timely manner. So, yeah, there’s just no substitution for all the help we’ve been getting from the public.”

We get new pests, Haubrich says because they’re hitchhikers …

HAUBRICH … “Yeah, they certainly do. You know, even the strongest flying insects aren’t going to fly across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. So, you’re right, everything, pretty much everything that we get here arrives because somebody moved it, generally by accident, but somebody, a human has moved that.”

Haubrich says the Spotted Lantern Fly is the next pest they expect to pay the Western U.S. a visit.

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