Country: United States

Title: Detections of Sirex noctilio Fabricius (Sirex woodwasp) in New York and Pennsylvania

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Report: NEW YORK: 13 additional New York counties with Sirex noctilio detections
In June 2006, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service-Plant Protection and Quarantine (APHIS-PPQ) and the New York State Departments of Agriculture and Markets and Environmental Conservation initiated a cooperative detection and delimiting survey in New York for S. noctilio. The 2006 cooperative effort is a continuation of the delimiting survey initiated in response to the 2004 detection of S. noctilio in Oswego County, New York, and the 2005 survey results identifying the New York counties of Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Wayne as infested.

APHIS-PPQ convened a Sirex Science Panel in January 2006, and based on the Panel’s recommendations, an aggressive multi-state trapping program, outside of the five known S. noctilio-infested New York counties, was initiated. Approximately 2,000 traps have been placed in a 25-36 square-mile grid, within a 150-mile radius from Oswego, New York and the eastern-most Canadian find in Leeds and Grenville County, Ontario. PPQ is also surveying at a number of Eastern Region ports, and states in both Regions are surveying as part of the Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey. The United States Forest Service (USFS) is surveying for S. noctilio in several states across the United States.

So far, for the 2006 season in New York, there are 13 new counties with S. noctilio detections: Allegany, Erie, Genesee, Jefferson, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Oneida, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Wyoming, and Yates. From these counties a total of twenty-eight S. noctilio (25 females and 3 males) specimens have been confirmed by Cornell University. All but 4 S. noctilio specimens were found in the New York grid survey. USFS Entomologists collected 1 female and 3 males from a symptomatic Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) tree in Jefferson County.

PENNSYLVANIA: First report of Sirex noctilio in Pennsylvania
Since late June, APHIS-PPQ, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Division of Forest Pest Management, and the USFS have been cooperating to survey north central and northeastern Pennsylvania for S. noctilio.

On July 27, 2006, Cornell University identified a female S. noctilio from Tioga County, Pennsylvania. The woodwasp was collected from a trap on July 24, 2006. The sample was forwarded to the Systematic Entomology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, for confirmation and vouchering, following established USDA-APHIS protocols for new U.S. state records.

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A Pest Risk Assessment (PRA) for S. noctilio was issued on August 1, 2006, by the APHIS-PPQ Center for Plant Health Science and Technology. The PRA document can be found at: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/ep/emerging_pests/sirexnoctilio.html. APHIS-PPQ is evaluating various regulatory and control options to address the S. noctilio infestation in the United States. Comprehensive biological and cultural control programs have been effective against introduced populations of S. noctilio in New Zealand, Australia, and South America.
 

Posted Date: Aug. 10, 2006, 9 a.m.