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Light brown apple moths found in Cayucos

August 10, 2011

Two light brown apple moths were discovered in Cayucos in traps set in residential landscapes by San Luis Obispo County agriculture inspectors. [The Tribune]

Additional traps have been set throughout the area to gauge the extent of the infestation.

The adult insect is an invasive species from Australia that can damage countless species of plants, including natives, ornamentals, and food crops, with the estimated potential to cause more than $100 million in damage in the state, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

The pest “is not established in the continental United States and, therefore, other states within the U.S. would likely impose restrictions on the movement of potentially infested fruits, vegetables and nursery stock,” the CDFA states. “These restrictions could severely impact the domestic marketing of California agricultural products.”

The female moth lays its eggs on the leaf surface or on the fruit itself and the “larvae disperse and construct silken shelters on the underside of leaves, usually near a midrib or large vein. Older larvae roll together leaves and buds or fruit with webbing. Damage to fruit occurs as surface feeding by the larvae. Larvae will occasionally enter the fruit to feed. Pupation takes place within the larval nests.”

The moth was discovered last summer in Los Osos and Nipomo, according to the Tribune. Thirteen counties in California are considered to have one or more infested areas and are therefore under quarantine: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma.

Residents are asked to avoid moving plants out of the area to prevent the spread of the pest to other locations.

Control methods include: using natural enemies, insecticides and pheromones (to disrupt mating).

For information, contact the SLO County Agriculture Department: 805-781-5910.


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Oooo, not the reply I thought to find! Thank you for your input, as a defacto distruster of most things government, I’ll keep an eye on it.


You should see the behind-the-scenes fiasco that is this year’s flu shots! Yikes.


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REPEATING LBAM LIES OVER AND OVER AGAIN DOES NOT MAKE THEM TRUE.


The San Luis Obispo County Agriculture Commissioner Office lied about LBAM repeating the same lies that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) delivered to scare the public.


At first I thought that CDFA and USDA just didn’t get the correct information and that these agriculture agencies had jumped through the wrong door as government agencies often do with our money.


But since they are reporting the same misinformation for numerous years now and still including LBAM as a dangerous pest when in fact it is an agricultural NON-ISSUE to growers, it is quite apparent that CDFA’s policies are to (1) Grab as much of our tax money as they possibly can using false “Emergencies” when they think they can get away with it, and (2) to promote as much pesticide use as they can to serve their chemical company masters.


200 million pounds of pesticides applied every year in California is MORE than enough. That is 6 pounds each person per year, 1/2 pound per month for each pregnant lady, fetus, infant, child, teen, adult and senior. That is way more than even the amount of salt we eat.


CDFA has promoted pesticides in California so that agriculture lands are essentially saturated and can’t take any more. So now CDFA is promoting additional pesticides beyond agriculture lands to spread them over our communities and into our forests to keep the pesticide sales growing.


CDFA is truly more dangerous to our children than the drug pushers hanging around the schools. We can try to teach our children to avoid the drug pushers, but no one can avoid the toxic chemicals that CDFA is pushing and now pushing them with fake “Green” labels pretending they are almost good for us, nearly the identical methods of the drug pushers.


Drug pushers catch one or two or a handful of our children and when they are caught they go to jail. The Executive management of CDFA are catching ALL of our children. And just because they have fancy offices to hide themselves from being seen on street corners, is no reason that these child chemical molester executives should not be tried and placed in the most uncomfortable prisons.


Here is a professor’s press release revealing that the CDFA underestimated by over one million times the toxicity of a pesticide they aerially sprayed directly onto people in their community where they live and work and raise children. They sprayed them from airplanes from 500 feet high and told the people it was “Safe” so the people did not even know to run and get their kids out of there.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17393.cfm


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