Dr Daniel Harder, one of the authors of the report into integrated pest management practices in New Zealand, told me that he was motivated to go to New Zealand to carry out research on the Light Brown Apple Moth, because he is the executive director of UC Santa Cruzs arboretum, which has over 10,000 species in its plant collections that are from New Zealand and Australia, and therefore wants to protect these collections.
“We have a long standing relationship with people in those countries and so we called them and asked, ‘what’s up with this insect?'” Harder recalls.
He says USCS’s arborteum uses integrated pest management techniques and was found to have LBAM when inspected last fall.
“We elected not to use organophosphates,” Harder said, noting that while the arboretum sells plants, and likes the revenue from them, it’s not in the same situation as local farms and nurseries, who saw significant revenue loss last fall, if they had been sprayed, compared to farmers and growers who could say they were outside the spray 9and therefore quarantine) zone.
Harder said that the main reason New Zealand controls LBAM, which he says is a “minor pest” is because it’s a trade barrier to shipping to the United States, just as the US now faces quarantines from Canada and Mexico over LBAM’s detection in California.
“China has been considering quarantining California, too” Harder says.
With 17 million people now in CDFA’s proposed spray zone, Harder says “The gorilla in the room is the eradication program, which as proposed, won’t work.”
To read more about the moths in all their fluttering glory, read the report, authored by Harder and Soquel nursery owner Jeff Rosendale, at the website of Assemblymember John Laird, who has been dealing with aerial spraying since last fall, when CDFA did their aerial bombardment of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.
http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a27/pdf/HarderNZReportFINAL.pdf