Fun With YouTube

Recent YouTube videos with a fresh, crisp, invasive species theme:

• The Statesman Journal has an interesting report about the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's search for non-native fish species in the wild. There's one about invasive American bullfrogs as well.
• Someone was nice enough to capture the lecture given David Orwig of Harvard Forest about the hemlock woolly adelgid and stick the whole thing on YouTube.
• The Florida Department of Agriculture has a creepy, crawly PSA about the Mexican red-rump tarantula.
• The Great Lakes Mayors hosted an hour-long panel on invasive species issues.
• The Zoological Society of London posted a video about surveys for invasive species in the Thames River, including the Asian clam and the zebra mussel.

Climate Out-Of-Control

Interesting article in The Boston Globe about the spread of the hemlock wooly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) throughout New England. The ISW has certainly covered this insect pest before, including this NPR story about the problems caused by the adelgid in Massachusetts. Now there is even more bad news: while biologists once thought that the adelgid could not become a problem in the more northern climes of Vermont and Maine, climate change has busted a hole in that assumption. A nice cold winter freeze will kill the insects, but recent climate data indicates that the average minimum temperature in upper New England has risen several degrees over the past few decades. That means it is getting less and less likely every year that a killing freeze will come by and wipe out any lingering adelgids - bad news for the hemlock trees!

Worm Front

From deep in the ISW mailbag...Mike H. sent in a link to this Boston Globe article about non-native earthworms. The topic has certainly been reported before on the ISW, but the Globe adds a nice New England flavor to it. The article notes that there could be as many as 15 different introduced earthworm species in the region, though typically no more than five of them are found in any one forest.

Knotty Paper

The Sheffield Wildlife Trust in England has found a great use for the invasive plant Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica). According to this article in The Independent, they're going to make into paper pots and pot liners to grow other plants. I'm going to have to get the recipe for this!