61
Asian hornet likely to have become established in UK, say experts | Invasive species
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
61 points (96.9% liked)
United Kingdom
4069 readers
141 users here now
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think that the factor here is climate change, but rather shipping stuff around the world and a few hitching a ride.
We apparently had some make it to the US recently, too.
https://theconversation.com/what-are-asian-giant-hornets-and-are-they-really-that-dangerous-5-questions-answered-137954
They are known to hitch rides in pot plant soil. The EU has banned import of pot plant soil originating from the UK for this reason.
There is an established population in France. Have we reciprocally banned the import of pot plant soil from France? Of course not.
https://www.bali.org.uk/news/import-controls-on-plants-and-plant-products-postponed-to-2023/
Biosecurity is overseen by DEFRA. How well has DEFRA been funded under Tory austerity?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/11/defra-hit-by-largest-budget-cuts-of-any-uk-government-department-analysis-shows
In theory, yeah, I guess that that Brexit would permit for customs checks to be done.
But in practice, you've got the Republic of Ireland, which I assume will have free interchange with parts of the EU where the hornets are established, and I don't think that hornets are going to care much about the Northern Ireland-Republic of Ireland border, even if you guys and the Irish did come up with some kind of way to do checks there, despite the Good Friday Agreement.
And they managed to get into Canada, and looking online, it looks like Canada doesn't allow import of soil from anywhere other than the US, and we in the US don't allow it from anywhere at all.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/import-information/permits/plant-pests/sa_soil
https://inspection.canada.ca/plant-health/horticulture/questions-and-answers/eng/1396453190750/1396453225939
I suspect that if soil restrictions weren't sufficient to stop them there, they probably also won't stop them from traveling from the EU to UK, even were such restrictions to exist in your case.