What Are Invasive Pests?
Invasive pests are in California and they sure are hungry. Invasive pests are any kind of damaging animals, insects, plants or plant diseases that are not native to the State. Invasive pests can rapidly expand their populations and feed on local plants, crops and other species. As they compete with native species for resources, they cause damage to local ecosystems and wreak havoc on crops and local plant life.
How Do Invasive Pests Get Here?
For the most part, the introduction of invasive pests into California is not done maliciously or intentionally. Despite strict controls, pests often sneak into air and ship cargo containers arriving from other countries. When the containers arrive and the cargo is unloaded, pests can enter our environment unnoticed, despite government inspectors monitoring shipments.
Pests can also enter California from another state, “hitchhiking" as unintended passengers in our cars or planes. If these pests do not naturally exist in our local environment, we’ve inadvertently introduced a potentially invasive pest into our local ecosystem.
What Type of Invasive Pests are in California?
There are many different types of invasive pests currently in California. Each may target one or more of our precious resources. For example, the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, or Medfly, has been intercepted in shipments coming into southern California as recently as 2008. That’s almost 30 years after the Medfly was eliminated in California after a large-scale campaign against the insect in the early 1980’s. The Medfly has the widest host range of any pest fruit fly and is considered the most damaging agricultural pest in the world. It has been recorded infesting a wide range of commercial and garden fruits, nuts and vegetables, including apple, avocado, citrus, melon, peach, plum and tomato. If the Medfly were to regain a strong foothold in California, it would cause devastating damage to many of our crops. That’s why there are ongoing efforts to monitor for and eliminate Medfly populations.
Another example is the gypsy moth. Originally imported to the U.S. in the 1860s as part of the growing silk industry, a number of the caterpillars escaped from the Massachusetts lab of the entomologist raising them, found a suitable habitat and started to multiply. By 1989 the gypsy moth was so widespread that swarms of moths were defoliating entire forests of hardwoods and conifers in 16 Northeastern states and Canada, making the trees vulnerable to disease and death.
Other invasive pests in California include the Asian Citrus Psyllid, Red Imported Fire Ant, Asian Longhorned Beetle, Mexican Fruit Fly, Oriental Fruit Fly and the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). Some of these pests are featured on this site, and more will be added. For a comprehensive list of invasive pests in California, visit www.cdfa.ca.gov/invasives.
Why Do Invasive Pests Need to be Managed?
Invasive pests compete with local species for food, space and resources. Since invasive pests do not always have natural predators, their numbers can quickly overwhelm local species and throw the local ecosystem off balance.
Furthermore, in the same way that we don’t want invasive pests entering our State, other states and countries work to keep these same pests outside their boundaries. These states and countries will block the entry of goods coming from areas where invasive pests exist. So if California is infested with an invasive pest, growers here may be unable to export their grapes, apples, avocadoes, tomatoes, flowers or other goods out of California—even within the United States. Invasive pests can also destroy landscaping, gardens and parks. This potential destructive effect on our State’s economy, local farmers and agricultural workers can be quantified in the billions of dollars.
Why Should I Care?
Invasive pests affect every Californian. They eat our food, destroy our parks and forests, wreck our gardens and throw our ecosystem off balance. Farmers lose crops, prices for produce and goods go up, our beautiful natural resources are threatened and the negative economic impact to our State’s economy could be devastating as agricultural exports diminish through loss of products or quarantines imposed by other states and countries.
Join us in taking a stand against non-native, invasive pests. Stay informed. Join the movement. Make a difference.
