Mitt Romney Vetoes Vital Insect Controls Which Dooms Vast Forests To Deforestization By Insects

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The insect infestation that ate up every single leaf of every tree in my forest this spring came out of Massachusettes. From the earliest days of agriculture, governments existed to control insect invasions. Now, they are telling us to jump in the lake even though our same government boasts about our trees producing oxygen and cleaning up our pollution which happens to be also killing our trees!

The Republican govenor thinks it is OK to see all our forests stripped clean by foriegn bugs.

By ANDREW RYAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Jun 25, 10:33 PM ET
BOSTON - A Massachusetts researcher is fuming about the governor's veto of money earmarked to help eradicate a leaf-eating moth that has already defoliated thousands of acres of trees in the state.

Republican Gov. Mitt Romney held up $150,000 for the winter moth control project when he vetoed $225 million Saturday from two economic stimulus bills passed by lawmakers last week. He slammed the proposed expenditure as one of the worst examples of "unnecessary and wasteful" spending by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.

"It strikes me as if someone came around the building and pitched their project and some legislator stuck it into the bill," Romney said at a Saturday news conference.

*snip*

Elkinton, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has spent two years trying to breed a parasitic fly that kills the larvae before they spread their wings. The fly — cyzenis albicans — helped eradicate winter moth outbreaks in Nova Scotia and British Columbia.

The money would fund the breeding of millions of flies to tame the winter moth population and permanently end the infestation, Elkinton said.

"This is not some pie-in-the-sky research effort," Elkinton said. "This is a solution. It has been proven to work."

The winter moth came from Europe and has attacked trees on the coast from Cape Ann to Cape Cod. The bugs target maples, oaks and fruit trees, crawling into the buds as caterpillars and munching on the leaves as adults. Researchers say the moths now number upward of a trillion in the state and have no natural predators.

I applaud the representatives in Mass. for trying to help matters! I wish we got this sort of help on my side of the border!

Forests are big. One cannot fight the invasion of foreign insects along. Lord knows, I went through a very difficult time, fighting the foreign caterpillars that invaded us this year! The devastation was terrific. I did save most of my orchard but only by dint of contant vigilance. Passively letting the public forests become the headquarters of invading bugs is beyond stupid but this is what the GOP is all about, isn't it?

They just don't care if we choke to death. Talk about short sighted! Wave after wave of invading bugs come from the coasts where they usually start thanks to international trade. This is an evolutionary moment that is most powerful: how humans have become vast archipelagoes for various invasive species to travel about the planet. All ecosystems are under assault from these invaders including my poor forest of mostly oak trees. We lost all our elms to invading species! Not now our oaks!

Oaks take many years to grow! One can't replace them in one season. They grow slow but their wood is hard because of this and they are a most valuable plant. One oak that is straight and over 300 years old is worth over $10,000 dollars!

Here is a most interesting comprehensive history of pesticides.

Subject: HISTORY OF PEST MANAGEMENT
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:11:13 -0400
From: Stephen Tvedten
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation

cc: Christine Whitman [email protected]

Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read the following:

The History of Pest Management

This resource lists key events in the history of pest management. An historical perspective is important for a complete understanding of any subject and pest management is no exception. There are always lessons to be learned from history although too often these pass unnoticed and unheeded because they are rarely taught as part of the subject of pest management in our schools and colleges. The brief outline of the key events in the history of pest management that are presented here provide a framework on which to hang other knowledge, facts and figures. - Compiled by Dr David Dent [Sections in red added by Stephen Tvedten]

I will note that the professor in Mass. who is researching how to stop foreign pest invasions is using modern evolutionary understanding to encourage a balance of nature rather than say, spraying poisons which has very bad side effects. Funding this sort of work is what governments are supposed to be all about! It is the keystone to governance.

The ancient way of dealing with pests was to pray to a god of some sort, this is the capstone to nearly all major religions.

In 1848 the Mormon pioneers planted crops for their first spring season in Utah. As the crops ripened, Mormon crickets descended upon the farms from the foothills east of the valley. The insects consumed entire fields. According to traditional account, the harvest was saved by flocks of native seagulls which devoured the crickets. This event, popularly called the "Miracle of the Gulls", is well-remembered by Latter-day Saints as a miracle.

This was in fairly modern times! Of course, the seagulls always come to the lake there, it is their usual place to go! They like the environment. And when humans planted rich fodder for bugs, the seagulls were overjoyed, lots of food for them! And of course, encouraging sea gulls is a good thing but again, understanding how nature works and working to stop unbalanced situations like many locust plagues are, challenges us even today.

Note that the Judea/Christian god loved to use insects to destroy things.

The eighth plague of Egypt was locusts. Before the plague, God informed Moses that from that point on He would "harden Pharaoh's heart," (as promised earlier in 4:21) so that Pharaoh would not give in, and the remaining miracles (the final plagues and the splitting of the sea) would play out.

As with previous plagues, Moses came to Pharaoh and warned him of the impending plague of locusts. Pharaoh's officials begged him to let the Hebrews go rather than suffer the devastating effects of a locust-swarm, but he was still unwilling to give in. He proposed a compromise: the Israelite men would be allowed to go, while women, children and livestock would remain in Egypt. Moses repeated God's demand that every last person and animal should go, but Pharaoh refused.

God then had Moses stretch his staff over Egypt, and a wind picked up from the east. The wind continued until the following day, when it brought a locust swarm. The swarm covered the sky, casting a shadow over Egypt. It consumed all the remaining Egyptian crops, leaving no tree or plant standing. Pharaoh again asked Moses to remove this plague and promised to allow all the Israelites to worship God in the desert. As promised, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not allow the Israelites to leave.

Now, asking people to leave isn't going to stop the bugs. Gods and bugs might be two-teaming us but there is no magic to insect infestations, it is just Mother Nature doing what she does: reproducing. And the only cure is to have sufficient numbers of predators to keep it down to a sustainable level. Right now, it is way out of balance and one insect species is endangering entire ecosystems from top to bottom.

This is what I pay taxes for: the government to help control these things! I can't do it nor can my neighbors, not even if we all try our hardest, it is way too big! And vital. If the Pharoh had to worry about plagues of insects then our own rulers better do so, too.

Yup. Gads.

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Comments

[D. F. Facti]

He' s a Mormon. Case
closed. *
I am at
the Four Seasons for tea. $25. Journalists at table next . Discussing revenue
streams.
Christ.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

And I spent the day fixing my inlaw's house. Gads.

[D.F. Facti]

Too bad I can't retain your services out here. I would take you out anywhere you like.

Now I see that D.C. is floating away, and there is inane CNN commentary to cover all angles. Perhaps they should call Milt Romney. He and Chertof could put their heads together - two natural disasters if ever there were any.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Bush lost a tree to the storm. I lost my entire forest. I don't think this is fair at all.

The floods are missing me by a hair and they are causing hairraising storms across the Northeast! I don't want floods here. That would really ice my cake this disasterous year. First, droughts, now, floods and pest plagues. Where is Moses?

[JSmith]

Here's who to thank for your gypsy moths!

"The gypsy moth was accidentally introduced into the United States in 1868 by a French scientist, Leopold Trouvelot, living in Medford, Massachusetts, who enjoyed raising many types of caterpillars including silkworms."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_moth

It was a Frenchman. But of course!

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

And it came from Massachusetts.

[Jsmith]

"It Came From Massachusetts!"

That could be a great late-night horror movie! When do we start filming?