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Asian hornet likely to have become established in UK, say experts | Invasive species
(www.theguardian.com)
how come i didn’t get to vote on this
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The bumblebee conservation expert Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, said he feared it was likely the hornets had become established in Kent.
He told the Guardian: “It is a bit too early to say for sure but the situation looks ominous, with a record nine nests found and destroyed this year so far.
Goulson added: “The arrival of Asian hornets would provide a significant new threat to insect populations that are already much reduced due to the many other pressures they face, such as habitat loss, pesticide use and so on.”
Matt Shardlow, the chief executive of the insect charity Buglife, agreed with Goulson, saying: “With four new Asian hornet nests being detected in the last week and a strong cluster in coastal Kent it seems likely that the species has colonised England.
The Asian hornet is a risk to biodiversity; in particular it can hunt large numbers of wild solitary bee species.
Nicola Spence, the chief plant and bee health officer at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “Evidence from previous years suggested that all 13 Asian hornet nests found in the UK between 2016 and 2022 were separate incursions and there is nothing to suggest that Asian hornets are established in the UK.
The original article contains 748 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Caelid leaking into Limburg.
Yay climate change!
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.
Most likely, one or two fertile queen hornets entered Canada via shipping packaging and created the colony that was discovered in 2019.
It’s easy for invasive species to travel this way. More than 19,000 cargo containers arrive daily at U.S. ports, and inspectors can only do random searches of shipping containers. One estimate suggests that just 2% of shipments are searched for evidence of invasive species. Many harmful organisms such as plant pests are intercepted, but some do get through.
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?
Defra hit by largest budget cuts of any UK government department, analysis shows
Economists at the RSPB say that this will translate into a cut of 57% in real terms since the Conservatives came into power, once inflation has been taken into account.
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
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.