- Next we have Judy Rosovsky.
She is with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture,
Food, and Markets.
She's also known for her work
as a Vermont state entomologist
and all of her work over the years with FEMC,
invaluable work, and thank you for all that.
Today, Judy will be presenting her talk
titled Hits, Misses, and Incomings,
A Review of Federal and State Pests of Concern.
Take it away.
- Hi, everybody.
Let me just turn my timer on. (chuckles)
Okay, thank you for coming to my talk.
My name is Judy Rosovsky and I'm the state entomologist
for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets
and I'm also the state plant regulatory official.
And in that capacity, I work closely
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's plant protection
and quarantine people and sometimes with the Forest Service.
So, okay, let's get the slides to move.
Sorry, you guys, of course, I'm having a problem.
There we go.
So I'm gonna discuss some diseases that are of concern
to the federal plant protection quarantine people
which are also of concern to the state.
And then some pests and diseases
are only of concern to the state.
The federal folks aren't that interested in them.
And I am gonna talk about a couple of agricultural pests
because some of those were fairly important,
but I will get to the forest pests shortly.
So these were a couple of diseases that came through
and I'm just gonna go through them one at a time.
Ralstonia is a bacteria
and it usually doesn't come into the United States,
but we had this huge influx of 250,000 geraniums
that went to 650 facilities in 44 States.
Luckily that didn't include Vermont,
but that did take a lot of resources and it actually was,
the survey to find and eliminate those plants
took place within about a month.
It's a quite horrible agricultural pest
and that was kudos to USDA
for dealing with that so effectively.
Okay, I'm not sure why these, oh, there we go.
Another agricultural disease, and this is a fairly new one,
it was just discovered in the mid East
in 2014 and 2015 and identified
and then it was sort of spread worldwide
before people realized what it was.
It was found in Florida in the last couple of years.
So there's been a nationwide survey.
We checked in Vermont
and we checked some of the largest tomato producers,
and Vermont is a large tomato producing state.
We didn't find any of that here,
but it's very difficult to tell this disease
apart from other similar diseases,
so we don't have it just yet,
but who knows what the future will bring.
And the nationwide survey results
have not been released yet.
Another disease, this one is a real problem out west,
is sudden oak death known as Phytophthora ramorum.
It is also difficult to tell apart from similar diseases.
It gets on rhododendrons, for example,
which always have horrible diseases on them.
And you just can't visually distinguish
this disease from others.
It's probably not gonna get established in Vermont
because it's cold intolerant,
but it does travel through the nursery trade,
and so we'll probably do a survey
for it this coming year
just to make sure that we're not transmitting it
inadvertently to other states.
In the background here,
you can see this ooze
that's one of the symptoms of sudden oak death.
And it's cold intolerance,
it can survive sort of -10 degrees Celsius
to up to 30 degrees Celsius,
which would be -14 degrees Fahrenheit
and 86 degrees Fahrenheit,
so it has a more limited range than some things.
So again, we probably won't find it here,
but we don't wanna be transmitting it to to others.
In the insect world, we have the velvet longhorned beetle.
When I say we have, I mean in the U.S.,
it's not in Vermont as far as we know.
Trichoferus campestris, and this is a pest
that comes in a lot on furniture and other wood products
and it's in at least nine states so far in the U.S.
and the USDA has decided that it only attacks dead
and dying or stressed trees,
and it's not a threat to live trees,
and they're gonna deregulate it.
In fact, it has been deregulated.
So that means we'll no longer get notification
when it's come in on furniture,
which is unfortunate, because in Europe,
they seem to think it does attack live trees,
so that remains to be determined.
And I just wanna put it on people's radar,
and of course it looks
like a number of other brown cerambycid beetles.
That's very helpful.
Then we have the Asian longhorn beetle
and you all probably know it's in South Carolina
where they discovered they had
more maples than they thought.
And also when they do survey work,
they seem to be encountering alligators
which is something I'm grateful
we don't have to deal with in Vermont.
More local pests are the European cherry fruit fly
that was found along the Niagara river
over in north, somewhat central Vermont.
I mean, New York, sorry, it's not in Vermont,
both in Ontario and in New York.
And there was a big survey effort done last field season,
no, sorry, in 2018,
where they put up about 300 traps in Vermont,
didn't find anything.
But then we discovered that Canada
is not planning on pursuing
an aggressive eradication policy, so, whoops.
So New York eradication efforts
have sort of diminished because there's no point
trying to eradicate something that your neighbors have.
And more locally, we have had two incidents
where we found elongate hemlock scale
on hemlock in northern Vermont.
And this picture shows
our Vermont Agency of Natural Resources,
Forest Parks and Recreation Forester,
Dan Dillner doing a basal bark spray application.
So that infestation,
one of them has been taken care of
and we hope to address the next one shortly.
The insects that we're most concerned about
which are of both federal and state concern are these three.
And for those of you not that familiar with them,
you can guess which ones we have
and which ones we don't have.
We do have the emerald ash borer,
and at first glance it looks like it's all over the place,
but I'd like to point out
there are plenty of places that it isn't in Vermont.
So it's in all but three counties,
but some of these areas are single trees,
and I realize that they are gonna be in more places
than you can actually see them
because they're under the bark in low densities,
but I'd still urge people
to continue to try to make an effort to slow the spread.
Don't move firewood.
Only move logs during the non-flight season.
Because the USDA has decided the quarantine hasn't worked,
and is going to deregulate
and they will put their efforts into other techniques
for addressing this pest,
so this map shows the boundary in blue
of the federal quarantine
which will go away on January 14th.
I will remark that that quarantine bought Vermont 16 years
from 2002, when it was discovered, to 2018,
which gave us some time to prepare
for the influx of this pest, so I am grateful for that.
And when we assess the efficacy of the quarantine,
we can't lose sight of that kind of data.
Vermont still has a law
pertaining to emerald ash borer or to all pests
that you pretty much it can't move pests.
You can't transport them, sell them, buy them,
bring them in, whatever.
And we also have a set of recommendations
that Forests and Parks created
to help people in the wood product industry
which you can find on vtinvasives.org,
and the state also has an external fire wood quarantine.
So we are still somewhat protected by the rule of law
and by common sense, I hope.
So please urge the people you deal with
to help slow the spread.
It's still gonna help.
In the meantime, spearheaded by Josh Halman
in Forest, Parks and Recreation,
Vermont has started doing bio-control releases.
We've released almost 9,000 insects in two different sites
and you can see they come in these little logs
which we attach to trees that we determine
have emerald ash borer in them.
We're only releasing one of the tiny stingless wasps
that are the bio-control agents
for emerald ash borer at this point,
but that will, we'll probably get the two others
and start releasing them soon.
And I'd just like to remind people
that this is not gonna help us
with our forests in the immediate future.
These bio-control insects will help, we hope,
in what's called the aftermath forest
when most of the ash trees are dead
and ideally we'll have a large enough bio-control population
to suppress emerald ash borer population
and allow regeneration of ash trees
such that they can reach reproductive age and reproduce.
And just a quick note
about emerald ash borer and climate change.
So for most insects, including emerald ash borer,
the colder it is, the worse it is for the insect.
But because these are ash borers,
they can get additional protection
from the cold through a snowpack,
and, you know, being sheltered,
being on the sunny side of the tree.
One interesting study that just came out
is that it's possible that the parasitoids
might be more vulnerable
to the types of extreme temperature changes
that are predicted from climate change.
So that's something to consider
as we move into these bio-control efforts.
Okay, sorry, I'm having trouble getting this to go,
but there we go.
So another problematic pest is spotted lanternfly.
It was first found in Pennsylvania in 2014.
It's continuing to spread
and I believe that population has increased
past the point where our quarantine efforts
are really stopping it.
If you can see these tiny red dots,
these are individual incidents where it's been found.
So I think it's inevitable
that we are gonna find it in Vermont
and we should start preparing ourselves for that day.
We had a major scare this fall.
There was a trace forward.
A trace forward is when you use sales records
and invoices to find out where the plants were sold
that were infected or infested.
And a nursery in Pennsylvania had sent maple trees
where some but not all of the egg masses
of the spotted lanternfly had been scraped off.
So these went to 44 businesses in Vermont and we checked
and didn't find any of these spotted lanternfly egg masses.
Some other New England states did find them.
This insect is a very good hitchhiker.
If you're anywhere near Pennsylvania,
please check your car before you come back.
And this time of year,
check plants that you're buying.
Okay, and then our other big ugly pest
is Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia,
also known as the murder hornet.
(chuckles) Yeah, it's here, it's big,
but it's not here in Vermont,
and it's fairly unlikely to get here.
We just don't have the same volume of trade
with Pacific countries coming directly to us
that they do have in Washington state.
And it also didn't come on the usual pest pathways
which are wood packing material or pallets,
so it's not entirely clear how it got here,
which makes it less likely to show up in Vermont.
So these stars indicate sightings.
The lighter, the orange ones are 2020,
and so are the black ones.
Oh, sorry, the black ones are 2019
and the purple ones are 2019.
So this inset shows the area we're looking at.
This is in Washington state and in British Columbia.
And then this map on the right
shows the trapping effort that happened,
that took place this field season.
These round orange dots
are where traps were put out by both professionals
and citizen scientists.
And then the square red dots are visual sightings
and the round dots are trap catches that were positive.
So it's around there.
So they undertook a major eradication effort
and they basically use radio telemetry.
You can see that attached to one of the wasps
and tracked down where the nest was.
They have to wear a special suits
because the stinger on these wasps
can go through a regular beekeeper suit.
They found the tree, wrapped in cellophane, vacuumed it out,
and then they went back and they cut the tree down
and they found some more live queens.
So multiple queens is not a good thing.
As far as climate effects on these insects,
you can see this is a range
that's been determined by using museum records
and other sources of information.
So they have a fairly wide ecological range.
They go down into Southeast Asia and up into the mountains.
And there was a climate suitability study done
which showed that the eastern climate is favorable
for these big true wasps,
but clearly they're able to be established in the west.
And I just wanted to show you this picture up here.
This is the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia,
which is a true wasp.
And then this is a European hornet,
which is an invasive from Europe that we have in Vermont.
So we don't have this one.
We do have this one.
And now we know a lot more about its Vermont distribution
because many, many people called in with these
thinking they had it.
All right, so let's hope 2021 is a better year
and has fewer pests.
- All right, Jen Pontius.
I have to say I'm a little overwhelmed
by the variety of threats.
You've shared some steps the state is taking,
but they seem resource-intensive
for larger scale control slash management.
How do you prioritize efforts?
What should we be most worried about?
- Oh, great question, Jen. (chuckles)
Just fear and panic everywhere.
So I think the most likely next pest
that is really gonna be problematic
will be the spotted lanternfly.
Some of the other pests, you know,
the European cherry fruit fly is a fruit fly,
so you can treat it like you would other fruit flies.
So some of these things can be managed
in the same way that a native insect would be dealt with.
And it does sound awful,
but really their regulatory response, for example,
to Ralstonia was heartening because they found it.
This is a massive threat and we're able to eliminate it.
That system worked really well for that.
So sometimes things work like they should and it's great.
But the best thing we can do
is sort of be aware of what we're transporting
from one place to another.
I mean, we saw that lesson with the emerald ash borer.
I hope that answered your question.
- All right, another question from G. Knickers.
Thanks Judy, do you have any specific recommendations
for the agricultural sector
about how they should be preparing
slash what they can do
to watch out for the spotted lanternfly?
- I think we need, (chuckles)
funny you should ask, Ginger,
to do a lot of education outreach.
For example, with the emerald ash borer,
because we had those 16 years to prepare for it,
we had fantastic education outreach.
Any time I went to hang a purple trap for, you know,
monitoring for them, the people who I spoke with
knew what I was doing.
That was great.
I feel like spotted lanternfly is not that well known
and that we really need to get the word out
because it's moving quickly.
It seems that it doesn't kill forest trees,
the spotted lanternfly, it may stress them.
So if there are climate change-related stressors
in addition to insect pest stressors,
that will be harder on the trees.
But the agricultural stuff,
I mean, we need to alert the grape industry, basically.
So I hope that answered your question.
- All right, we have a question now from Aaron Marcus.
Thanks, Judy, uplifting as always.
As we have very little tree of heaven as a host in Vermont,
what are our chances of being able to limit
spotted lanternfly's spread here?
- Hey Aaron, thanks for listening to my talk.
So it sounds like in Pennsylvania
they have done some studies and make it clear
that the spotted lanternfly can reproduce
on non-Ailanthus or non-tree of heaven hosts.
The lab studies showed reduced fecundity,
but the outdoor exclusion cages,
they seem to be able to reproduce just as well
on non-Ailanthus hosts as on Ailanthus.
So, unfortunately, I don't think,
while it would probably still be helpful
to get rid of Ailanthus 'cause it's an invasive tree,
it's not gonna keep them from coming up.
And I don't know what their temperature tolerance is,
but I think that it's lower than has been thought.
So I think what is gonna happen is we're gonna get it
and we just need to know that and prepare for it.