Eradication Strawberry Guava (leaf gall)

[kani-lehua]

"invasive guava might meet its match":
http://starbulletin.com/2008/05/23/news/story09.html

"if the release goes as planned, the little bug, formally known as tectococcus ovatus, will form galls, or bumps, on the leaves of strawberry guava, also known as waiawi, weakening the plant and slowing its fruit production.

"the insect does not kill the plant outright," a statement from the forest service said."

"...some other invasive plants that have been subject to biocontrol in the past: prickly pear cactus, lantana, banana poka and ivy gourd. despite some control, those plants are still commonly found in hawai'i."

malia paha o lohe aku

perhaps they will hear

[farmerjohn]

some of you folks sound like you are off the deep end with government paranoia...get a grip on reality, and please research this instead of fantasizing outcomes and whining over your obvious lack of exploring the facts.
this research for the scale has been ongoing for years and is the best documented biocontrol project yet. and better that they field tested it in Brazil than Hawaii to make sure it won't affect ohia or even yellow guava. now, if it won't affect a close sister plant like yellow guava in the country where those plants and insects have evolved together, how could it jump to some plant farther related?
to equate it with the mongoose-rat experiment that had no process is so off-the-wall and ignorant.
you guys obviously don't know much about agriculture and the history of recent biocontrol in Hawaii that has really helped farming and ranching. mahalo to Kani-Ohia for the references!

wai`awi is taking over our forests as i write. as that happens, plants that are really culturally important like maile and palapalai are being pushed out. these are the REAL Hawaiian plants you want to have around for the next generation...not some wormy fruit that people only eat sparingly when they hike.
and i don't know anyone who can eat more than a handfull of wai`awi without getting a sour stomach.
to act like its an important plant to Hawaii's culture and agriculture is like saying we need fruit flies so the birds have food (worms) to eat.
wai`awi is just the opposite...it is a threat to agriculture because any fruit fly eradication program (med fly, melon fly, etc) has failed due to all the host for the maggots in the guava infestations.
our attempt to diversify agriculture with viable fruit crops is hit hard by fruit flies and the wai`awi that breeds them.
and for you folks that worry about ugly dead wai`awi branches...you may have noticed how competitive the wild vegetation is in Puna or Hawaii in general; other plants will grow to fill gaps left by dying or wounded strawberry guava...who knows, maybe even maile or ohia if we're lucky!
support diversified fruit crops by supporting this biocontrol of wa`awi!

[Rob Tucker]

In today's HTH Letters To The Editor a writer asks:

...just who is being inconvenienced by these trees, which have been a part of the Hawaiian ecosystem for the past 180 years?

http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/arti...ters01.txt

My quick answer is I am. I have about 30 acres of lowland rain forest which is essentially destroyed by this nasty guava. Many areas are generally impenetrable. The Ohia are dying off. These guava contribute nothing and take away much.

If anyone wants `em bring a shovel...... I have about 2 million of them.

[StillHope]

quote:

---

Originally posted by farmerjohn

some of you folks sound like you are off the deep end with government paranoia...get a grip on reality, and please research this instead of fantasizing outcomes and whining over your obvious lack of exploring the facts.................

you guys obviously don't know much about agriculture and the history of recent biocontrol in Hawaii ..............

---

Dear Farmerjohn!
I don't know you.I am assuming that this subject is important to you and you are well informed about the issue.
But if you mean well,it's not what you say,it's how you say it matters.

[JayJay]

I deal with guava every day so I've had lots of time spent in reflection concerning the environmental outcome connected with the Big Island. The species propagates either by fallen seed or by root spreading so the concept that some biologcal process will ever eliminate the plant is ridiculous. That money on research could have been better spent elsewhere because guava is here to stay and we're going to have to find a way to make it an actual 'crop' (along with the albesia).
Here's the solution (so of course it won't be considered since the evironmental lobby is absolutely insidious in terms of condemning us to a life of squalor).

Albesia is a soft wood which lends its self to be 'chipped' rather easily, hence it would be perfect in a process which produced 'presto logs.' Guava is hard and dense with a btu rating somewhere around oak (which is a lot -and I burned both and they appear comparable). So we have our 'softwood' which is used to create the initial fire necessay to heat a boiler and we have our 'hardwood' which is injected once the temperatures are sufficient for guava burning. Bottom-line ... high temperatures are possible by firing a boiler with these FUELS which could also burn a certain ratio of trash.

Of course the stack emissions need be scrubbed and the collected elements and compounds could be sold back to industry for various applications.

The boilers would create steam which would run turbins which in turn would run generators which would produce 660 VAC 3-phase electricity which could be distributed by Helco's existing lines.

This system of creating steam to fire boilers would mean jobs for many of the young people (who are compelled to leave the island every year, or worse yet, roam the streets wondering what to do). It would also create a logging industry to feed the boilers plus all the sundry industries which would be necessary to support such a system, i.e., management, engineering, trucking, administrative, maintainance, security, stack by-product jobs, et al, while dove-tailing nicely with the loomng refuse problem.

At some point, as the price of oil rallys, we're going to wish we had created such a basic system and it looks like the solution is either geothermal or a turbine generation system or both.


JayJay

[gtill]

Good plan, use the offending wood for fuel where it gets eradicated at a profit!

Better include some lawyers though. Somthing like it has been tried on Hamakua coast, to power a sawmill for plywood production, and is being sued for pollution before it starts. No business would even attempt a start up at these electic prices!

[JayJay]

Of course your're right and that's why I included the caveat at the beginning of my post. The concept, although technically perfect and potentially beneficial, would not be considered as a viable solution to our guava/albesia infestation since it's simply to basic and we live in a society which is always looking for a 'quick fix' and generally a technical one at that. What most people don't realize is that when we're talking about major electrical production (with the exception of hydro-electric which we dont have here on the B.I essentially), what we're really referring to is 'steam power' and that includes bunker fuel, geo-thermal, coal and nuclear. In the balance it doesn't really matter what fires the boilers as long as it's able to create the necessary temperatures for the production of saturated steam which drives the turbines which in turn drive the generators.

We have an abundance of wood from trees which are about to create a real enviromental nightmare for the residents of this island unless something is done to mitigate their spread. Within a generation, at current spread rates, we're going to see these unintended consequences due to lack of foreward looking leadership and I'll mention the main one as I see it and that's eventual massive loss of native forrest and other properties due to the 'chocking effect' demonstrated by both these species and anyone who hasn't witnessed this phenomenom simply take a walk off the Old County Road which runs over the top of the Black Sands Sub Division. This is our future. The landscape soon becomes absolutely impassable due to falling albesia limbs and the ground covers which grow over them.

I think there can be no doubt after witnessing the envionmental degredation meated out by these two plants (in addition to myconia and other's) over the last thirty-five years, that we'e been 'invaded' by various biological species which carry the potential to actually lower the quality of life here on the Big Isand, yet do we see any real effort on the part of the current leadership to mitigarte the severity of this spread? On the contrary ... the current leadership is hastening such a spread by their basic inablity to even recognize the problem which simply gets worse every year. At some point it's going to become so manifest that there will a public outcry.
Shame though ... we really could produce all the power we needed, and then some, just by utilizing the natural resources laid around us. When oil is $200.00 and we're paying $10.00/gallon (or more) and perhaps $1.00/KWH for power ... life for everyone (high and low alike), is going to change.



JayJay

[McGodfather]

The comments so far on Punaweb with respect to biological control of strawberry guava (SG) have been far ranging, but it seems we could use a few more pro-biocontrol essays here.

I think I need to start with a definition of Classical Biological control (the “mini-definition” here) which is the introduction of natural enemies to control a pest. Ideally those natural enemies should come from the native range of the pest so that the natural enemy is evolutionarily adapted to its host and specific to it, and the pest should be an alien species, but in the past, even some natives were targeted! So let’s explain a few more things about Classical Biocontrol.

You have already been told by Kim that the introduction of the mongoose predated any organized science-based biocontrol efforts. Biological control (BC) of arthropod pests is a different topic from BC of weeds, and also has a different historical record with respect to non-target effects. I don’t have space to review 100+ years of that BC work here, but it is true that there have been more non-target effects with arthropod BC than weed BC. This is mostly because many more natural enemies of arthropods have been released in Hawaii. Prior to the 70’s there were several that should not have been released, and native insects and even some intentionally released BC of weed natural enemies have taken hits. Since the 70’s, the record, I believe is unblemished. If any of you can think of an example then let me know. The testing and review procedures in Hawaii since the 70’s are probably now more stringent than all other States and most countries.

But that is classical biological control of arthropods not weeds, which is the topic at hand. The record of non-target attacks by intentionally released natural enemies of weeds in Hawaii is actually much better than that of arthropods. BC of weeds began in Hawaii in 1902 with the release of the lantana lace bug for biological control of lantana. Since then about 85 more natural enemies of weeds have been released for a variety of agricultural and natural area weeds, with some notable successes, as well as many that had little effect. A few of these prior to the 70’s did indeed attack non-target plants. However, these were closely related plants that could have been predicted as alternate hosts. But back then tests were not so thorough and people didn’t seem to mind if some native plants or other “unimportant” plants were chewed on! Such insect s would never be approved for release these days. Oddly enough, that first release, the lantana lace bug, did in fact cross to an unpredictable host! But that has not happened since, and safety testing now tries to include all possible alternate hosts. Certainly there are still some risks, but for Tectococcus ovatus, those risks are quite small.

I don’t see how strawberry guava invasion in native forest can be good for our watersheds, when it’s monospecific stands have no other understory plant species and the forest floor is all mud! Some of that mud probably ends up on our reefs. Personally, I am unwilling to give up Hawaii’s low to mid-elevation wet and mesic native forests to become a monoculture of one plant just because it makes a fruit that hardly gets used! Wild pigs fatten up on the fruit seasonally, increasing their numbers, then may invade crop lands when the SG fruit are gone. They then spread or facilitate spread of more SG and other weeds in our native forests.

Another “benefit” we get from SG is, the production of an alien nitidulid beetle, Lasiodactylus tibials, which increases seasonally breeding in the thousands of fallen fruit, then comes to indoor lights at night in large numbers in Mountain View and Glenwood annoying some residents there. Without biocontrol those cycles will not change. Speaking of fruting cycles, what about fruitflies?

I realize there are a few people that make some SG jam and sell it, but it is definitely not an important commercial “crop”. Sometimes the needs of the many (both us and ohia trees!) outweigh the needs of the few. “Farmerjohn” was correct about SG being a reservoir of fruit flies, that attack many other fruit crops that are economically important, and we need growers to expand acreage, not spend their money spraying pesticide to control all those fruitflies!

If you have not already read the letters to the editor (Hawaii Tribune Herald) sent on May23 by Geg Asner, JB Friday and Pat Hart, please do so. They are some of the most dedicated native forest researchers I know. Also, do visit the Forest Service website that Kim referred to previously that presents the rationale for classical biocontrol of weeds. And be sure the read the Environmental Assessment so you know what the actual risks and benefits are.

If any of you know another effective way besides classical biological control to save what is left of our heritage native Hawaiian forest, please attend the Conservation Conference in July in Honolulu and tell us all about it. Obviously pesticides are unpopular and if you think there are enough tax dollars to send out armies of workers with machetes (without spreading other weeds) over thousands of acres, you’re way more of a Liberal than I am. We have wrecked native ecosystems so bad with our pretty imported plants (and hitchhiking pests) that classical biocontrol really is the only hope. Without it, you can kiss goodbye to the last of what is truly the native Hawaiian landscape.

If I may borrow Farmerjohn’s style of rhetoric, this is Hawaii not Brazil. If you want to “live in harmony” with invasive alien weeds, just don’t oppose actions that will protect ka aina. If you must hug a tree (nothing wrong with that), hug an ohia, not a weed from Brazil!

Malama wao kanaka.

[MarkP]

I'm with the pro-biological control camp. I have been hiking in several places around Hawaii where no one is ever going to be able to get to and do any useful work, so no program of using SG or Albezia for fuel or any other purpose is going to save those areas. Only the slow but steady effects of a biological control have a chance since the spread of the biocontrol will be as insideous (for the SG) and unceasing as is the spread of the original pest. The mongoose fiasco was the work of a handful of good ole boys plantation owners, not modern science. Not to say that modern science is infallible but the mongoose thing is not a good comparison.

[Jon]

So you import a bug that eats the plant and kills them all.... what does the bug eat after they are all dead?

I assume we all under stand the life process... if you take away the food of this bug, it will find another food source. This new food source will most likely be something no one thinks of.


Texan Moving to Puna.