"If a pest can enter the United States, over time, it will find a way here, so a means must be found to develop appropriate, feasible, economic, and cost-effective quarantine and control procedures," says Huber. The report insists that a 'stew' of invasive pests and crops have breached "the once formidable geographic barriers posed by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through travel, trade, and transportation. The ecology of the western hemisphere has been changed by agricultural, social, and industrial activities."
The stew includes every class of organism, from viruses to fungi to plants to large animals. West Nile virus, chestnut blight, pigs, gypsy moths, pigeons, zebra mussels, purple loosestrife and bark beetles join about 50,000 other species on the US catalog of nonindigenous residents. Some arrive accidentally, as hitchhikers in ship ballast or in imported fruits, logs, and potting soil. Hundreds land each year. Others are introduced intentionally—a New York ...
