FOR RELEASE: July 11, 1997
Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander, Jr.
Office: (607) 255-3290
Internet: [email protected]
Compuserve: Larry Bernard 72650,565
http://www.news.cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Scientists from Cornell University will help the Montezuma
National Wildlife Refuge in Seneca Falls, N.Y., exact revenge against
purple loosestrife, a beautiful but prolific weed that chokes wetlands.
More than 20,000 Galerucella pusilla and G. calmariensis --
loosestrife-specific, leaf-feeding beetles without a common name -- will be
released Thursday, July 17, at 9 a.m. at the refuge.
Last year, the scientists, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, released a few hundred beetles as a test to combat the purple
loosestrife at the refuge. The release of these biological control beetles
has been approved by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Essentially, the
beetles eat the leaves of the purple loosestrife, thus killing it.
"They are my little insect friends," said Bernd Blossey, director of the
Biological Control of Non-Indigenous Plant Species Program at Cornell's
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Because loosestrife's natural
predators were in such short supply, Blossey has been rearing the
leaf-feeding beetles to distribute nationally since 1993. Last year, the
program shipped 360,000 beetles and this year they expect to ship about a
half-million.
Several years ago there were as many as 1,500 acres of purple loosestrife
at Montezuma. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service flooded the refuge deeper
than normal in many wetland areas, trying to reduce the loosestrife
population through stress, but it also negatively affected the other
plants. Biological control through its natural predator -- the beetles --
is preferred. This year, there are about 400 acres of purple loosestrife
left at the refuge.
Purple loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria L., is an exotic plant from Europe
that was introduced into North American wetlands early in the 19th century
-- likely coming over in the ballast of trading ships, Blossey said. It
also was used as medicinal herb in the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery,
bleeding, wounds, ulcers and sores. The plant proliferated and put a
stranglehold on many wetland areas across the continent -- degrading food,
shelter and nesting sites for wildlife.
Well-established along the New England seaboard and carried along inland
waterway routes such as the Erie Canal, the invasion of purple loosestrife
did not abate. Today, throughout North America every contiguous American
state, except Florida, and every Canadian border province, suffers from the
loosestrife invasion.
The mass production of these beetles was funded through a wildlife
restoration grant from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of
Federal Aid, and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA).
With biological control, Blossey explained, the loosestrife is kept at
manageable levels. A few of the plants survive, but they don't put a
choke-hold on the natural habitats. "Purple loosestrife is too abundant
now, but in about ten years the numbers will be reduced and we'll be able
to really enjoy it," he said. "The insects will keep it in check."
-30-
RSS