Invasive global biotrade disrupts local populations

In 2007, the Light Brown Apple Moth was unexpectedly detected by a retired entomologist in the Berkeley Hills. The LBAM, a native of Australia not previously found in North America, long-feared, had arrived and threatens to become a permanent resident here. This has embroiled the extended Bay Area, the California Department of Food & Agriculture, and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service of the Federal government in a contentious and emotional conflict. The LBAM is a polyphagous (eats lots of kinds of things, in this case, plants) lepidopteran (the taxonomic order of caterpillars and butterflies) Class A pest, meaning that it is a “clear and present danger” to the state, according to the CDFA. The LBAM is an invasive species that threatens significant economic harm to California’s agricultural industry, not through direct pest damage or pesticide costs. Other countries do not want to be contaminated by LBAMs, and are blocking imports of some California agricultural goods that they fear may be contaminated. The flashpoint of public controversy is the spraying of a synthetic pheromone to disrupt the sexual reproduction of the LBAM. Even though the vast majority of scientists see this technology as the safest approach to controlling the pest, virtually every aspect of CDFA’s eradication program has been challenged by various members of the public. Eradication campaigns reveal the uneasy relationships between science and society, but the global trade promises to exacerbate latent tensions, and erode public trust in all manner of institutions that use the ecological sciences.

The LBAM is an invasive species, which is a relatively new term to describe a species from another part of the world that negatively impacts a new environment (where it invades) by disrupting its ecosystem functions or ecosystem services provided to human society. Biotic invasions, as they are also known, are of increasing concern to environmental scientists, managers and policy makers because the rate of invasive species movement and establishment is increasing correlative with global trade. Certain taxa seem better adapted to hitchhiking through the global trading system, establishing populations in a new environment, and causing various types of harm. The trade in electronic goods poses less of a threat than moving products of the environment (e.g., fresh fruits and vegetables). The international movement of live plants for the horticultural trade has come under greater scrutiny because living plant material is a highly risky pest pathway, and it appears this might have been the way LBAM got here.

In response to years of public distaste for pesticides, CDFA has designed this eradication campaign using many new non-pesticide technologies, including the pheromone mating disruption technology. This is not a pesticide because it does not kill anything. Pheromones are chemical signals produced by all manner of living organisms. As part of my dissertation/MIT Press book I researched how practical scientist in agriculture worked to use synthetic pheromones to confuse male codling moths so they could not find potential mates, which reduces reproduction. Because of state law, however, pheromones are classified as a pesticide, which means they are reported as such by the media, even though they cannot kill (= “-cide”) anything.

So the folks at CFDA who thought they were going to be lauded for using non-toxic pesticide alternatives were stunned, caught by surprise, when hundreds of angry citizens in the Santa Cruz and Monterey areas protested the planned aerial spraying. When it comes to public risk perception, the three words that matter most are “government” “planes” “spray”. After those 3, nothing else matters. People understandably do not want their persons or property sprayed by anyone, much less the government. The split between scientific experts, who thought they were doing what the public might support, and the various expressions of anger, resentment, protest by the public reveals divergent assumptions about risk, technology, and the benefits of agriculture to society. More generally, it also suggests that society is happy to receive the economic benefits of global trade in biological organisms and is not aware of the various harms caused by invasive species.

In a weak moment, at the request of the California Secretary of Agriculture, I agreed to serve on CDFA’s Environmental Advisory Task Force for the LBAM eradication project. I am very concerned that a public backlash against this eradication campaign has the potential to undermine public support for future invasive species prevention and management efforts, and I wrote an open letter to CDFA explaining my concerns. In future blog posts, I hope to explain how STS scholarly tools can help untangle some of the controversies that swirl around this, such as: the need to eradicate; whether eradication is possible; concerns about human health impacts; the nature of risk perception and risk management in invasive species issues; and the future of public confidence in invasive species prevention and management.

In the mean time, I leave you with my favorite quote from the eradication campaign so far:

TO REPORT SUSPICIOUS MOTHS, CALL TOLL-FREE: 1-800 491-1899

--Keith Douglass Warner

Comments

[Geof Bowker]

Nice one Keith. The 'suspicious moths' reminds me of the wonderful book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906) - there's a description of some of the delights here: http://www.hedweb.com/animal-trials.html.