Venice in trouble

[BeastMan]

http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/04/roseau_cane_dying_in_mississippi_delta.html#incart _river_index

Pretty wild story. Apparently there is an invasive, foreign insect eating up the marsh at an alarming rate. Between oil spills, nutria, and now this, the damn LA marsh can't catch a break.

[Prediction? Pain.]

That sounds awful. And it's bizarre that they've been unable to identify the pest yet.

Is that kind of thing uncommon on your part of the coast? I guess I've never thought about invasive insects affecting wetland or coastal areas before, and about how important cane and grasses are to those ecosystems. We've got a number a similarly devastating pests where I live -- the emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adegid, the latter of which has wiped out large swaths of old-growth hemlock stands across Appalachia, immediately come to mind -- but they've both been around for a decade or more and their effects are widespread throughout the eastern U.S.

I guess once they figure out what it is they can begin to plan a remediation effort. I know with the woolly adelgid, we have to have our hemlocks chemically treated every few years -- the state treats those on public lands as well -- and there have been experiments with releasing predator beetles from other parts of the United States to see if they can make a dent without further disrupting things. So I guess there are a lot of possible approaches. Still, was a crappy situation.

On a somewhat related note, do you see any problems in those coastal areas with invasive plant species as well? Nothing is more frustrating to me than seeing a trailhead near a mountain town or neighborhood that's being choked out by ivy, honeysuckle, and privet. I've seen the bottoms of ponds in my area cluttered with invasive garbage (sometimes due to someone planting something for aesthetic reasons without thinking of the consequences), but I've never heard about invasive plant species that can choke out native flora in marshes and wetlands too.

[BrunswickDawg]

Prediction?Pain - coastal ecosystems are extremely fragile and they are constantly bombarded by outside influencers. Invasives can come down river to the coast, or come on ships from China. A mild winter can allow things to grow that are normally kept in check by cooler winter waters. We also have so many plants and aninmals that grow in a relatively compact zone that any imbalance or invasive can wipe things out quickly. A lot of the solutions - pesticides, etc - are expensive or are only effective when "blanketing" every single tree (or blade of marsh grass) multiple time with specific doses. It's crazy. Here in Coastal Georgia we have seen the entire Red Bay population wiped out by a beetle that came from China in the wood of pallets. Spread from Savannah to Jacksonville in less than 10 years. There was also a snail here that was impacted by an invasive, and the result was marsh grass dying off in large patches - acres and acres - at a time. Luckily, it was solved, and the marshes recovered.

[Prediction? Pain.]

Prediction?Pain - coastal ecosystems are extremely fragile and they are constantly bombarded by outside influencers. Invasives can come down river to the coast, or come on ships from China. A mild winter can allow things to grow that are normally kept in check by cooler winter waters. We also have so many plants and aninmals that grow in a relatively compact zone that any imbalance or invasive can wipe things out quickly. A lot of the solutions - pesticides, etc - are expensive or are only effective when "blanketing" every single tree (or blade of marsh grass) multiple time with specific doses. It's crazy. Here in Coastal Georgia we have seen the entire Red Bay population wiped out by a beetle that came from China in the wood of pallets. Spread from Savannah to Jacksonville in less than 10 years. There was also a snail here that was impacted by an invasive, and the result was marsh grass dying off in large patches - acres and acres - at a time. Luckily, it was solved, and the marshes recovered.

Thanks for the info, Brunswick. So basically, we're all getting equally effed by invasive pests. Solid. I don't make it to coastal areas much -- and the last blurb (https://dghaskell.com/2013/07/04/usa/) I remember stumbling across that dealt with something even vaguely similar was nearly four years ago (aside: David Haskell's stuff is really, really worth checking out if you're at all into biology, botany, or nature-writing) -- so it's good to get a a reminder that this sort of stuff is happening everywhere.