Ingles

In Battle of Bug vs. Shrub, Score One for the Bird

DENVER — Got an alien invader plant species? Unleash an alien insect invader to fight back. One invader eats the other, andthen abracadabra: problem solved. That was the theory, anyway.
But the United States Department of Agriculture this month quietly ended its involvement in a five-year-oldprogram intended to reduce an invasive alien tree species in the West — the saltcedar, or tamarisk — using an equally alien invasive beetle from Kazakhstan, the saltcedar leafbeetle, which loves to eat tamarisk leaves.
The problem is that an endangered bird species, the Southwestern willow flycatcher, likes to nest in tamarisk groves, which have chokedriver banks from California to Texas. Continued release of the tamarisk-eating beetles could pose harm for the tamarisk-nesting flycatchers, the Agriculture Department says.
Noteveryone is convinced. State agriculture officials in Colorado, for example, said that the new no-beetle rule applied to the interstate release or transfer of bugs, and that itsown beetle program — which mixes tamarisk attack with willow restoration — is working just fine and will continue. Flycatchers, as their name suggests, evolved to nest in willowtrees and adapted to tamarisks only as the pest-trees spread.
“The beetles, at least from what we’ve seen, have beaten back tamarisk, and native vegetation, especially willows,have come back strongly,” said Dan Bean, the director of the Palisade Insectary, the biological pest control program for the Colorado Department of Agriculture.
Flycatcherdomain will be avoided, Mr. Bean said. “But to say no more beetles anywhere would be irresponsible,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23beetle.html?ref=science