Little moth poses a big threat to California's wine-growers
The discovery in the Bay Area of a tiny Australian moth with voracious apetite leads to renewed criticism of DHS’s inspection of cargo for agricultural threats
You drink California wine? Then you sould be worried. Fruit growers and vineyard owners in California are becoming increasingly anxious about a sudden invasion of a tiny insect identified as the light brown apple moth. The reason: This miniscule creature (it is the size of a little fingernail) has, as a caterpillar, the appetite of a turbocharged combine harvester. The moths are native to Australia, and scientists first noticed their unwelcome arrival in February in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco — and thus uncomfortably close to the heart of America’s wine country in the Napa valley and the state’s fruit and shrub orchards.
The Indepnendent’s David Usborne reports that emergency teams have already been deployed to begin spraying insecticide on bushes in the suburb of Oakley, also in the Bay Area, while spraying was planned to begin yesterday in parts of Napa. We are not yet there, but some in the Bay Area muse about the state-wide panic which followed the arrival of the medfly in the early 1980s, when the National Guard was called in to bury infested fruit and mass aerial sprayings were ordered. The emphasis this time is thus on quick action before the moths begin to expand their territory, particularly into the multi-billion-dollar wine-growing regions.
How the moths made it to the West Coast is another question. State officials note that California is home to many immigrant communities and it is likely that somebody brought a plant carrying the moth pupae into the country from their homeland illegally. This explanation, in turn, has caused some agricultural officials to point a finger in anger at DHS: They say that they had warned long ago about giving responsibility for all cargo inspections to officials of DHS who are not trained to be alert to agricultural threats.
These officials are lobbying the government for the right to resume port and airport inspections. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has already tabled a bill to that effect.
