USDA Blog Post: A Day in Your Life with Invasive Species

USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent this bulletin at 04/02/2013 02:30 PM EDT

USDA has proclaimed April to be Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month, so this is the perfect time to consider how invasive species can crawl, swarm or ooze their way into your daily life.  The fact is, invasive pests and diseases hunger for many of the same things we enjoy each day.  And as they feast on America’s agricultural and natural resources, they can devastate crops and forests, throw ecosystems out of balance and lead to lost jobs and closed export markets.

So let’s follow a day in your life with these invasive species, starting right at the breakfast table.  You savor your glass of orange juice at breakfast.  Citrus greening disease also loves America’s citrus trees … to death, costing Florida’s citrus industry billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.  You pour maple syrup over your pancakes.  If Asian longhorned beetles had their way, they’d be enjoying those maples, too … as they eat them from the inside out.  This tree killer, now in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio, threatens forest resources valued at billions of dollars.

After breakfast, [Read more]