clair084

National Invasive Species Awareness Week February 26 - March 3, 2012 Washington, DC A week of activities, briefings, workshops and events focused on strategizing solutions to address invasive species prevention, detection, monitoring, control, and management issues at local, state, tribal, regional, national and international scales. Here are 10 ways to observe NISA Week . Learn more at link . -------------------------------------------------------- Florida considers controversial cure for polluted Lake Apopka: Let hydrilla spread By Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel 9:17 p.m. EST, January 22, 2012 The sickly Lake Apopka has been healing at a snail's pace despite undergoing some of the more costly environmental rehabilitations in Florida history. So a state agency is thinking about speeding up the process by encouraging an aggressive, aquatic weed — hydrilla — to take root in the lake. It's a hotly contested idea that appears to be leaving little room for compromise. Those who want...

Lifeform of the week: The mystery of the monk parakeets By Alex Reshanov EarthSky Feral green parrots are living all over the United States. Where did they come from? How did they get here? And don’t they get cold in the winter? A friend in Brooklyn, New York, where I was living at the time, first drew my attention to the exotic, bright green birds that occasionally turned up in the neighborhood trees. Various legends fluttered around the misplaced parrots – they’d escaped from the zoo, from a pet store, from a crate bound for a pet store, and had managed to establish themselves in some nook of the Big Apple. The tales portrayed the birds as a single anomalous colony unique to a city itself renowned for uniqueness. Only in New York… But after moving to Austin, I began to notice suspiciously similar birds, slightly better camouflaged against the greener scenery, but still a bit too tropical looking to blend in with the grackles and mourning doves that dominate the local bird-o-sphere. I...

Out of Odor: Offensive-Smelling Bugs Put U.S. Farmers on the Defensive Pests Fly Among Crops, Nest in Homes; Scientists Battle Stinky 'Takeover' By HEATHER HADDON Wall Street Journal Brian Biggins's life stinks. The Maryland organic farmer is suffering from an infestation of stink bugs—crop-consuming pests emitting the odor of cilantro mixed with burned rubber and dirty socks. They began destroying his fields of peppers and tomatoes in 2010. Now, they've invaded his Adamstown home, where Mr. Biggins crushes them by hand and has trained his English Shepherd, Coadee, to eat them. Still, thousands scurry across the floor of his farm house. "For the love of God, my wife is the one I feel for the worst," says Mr. Biggins. "This is the kind of thing that you don't sign up for." Stink bugs, Mr. Biggins's brown marmorated nemesis, infiltrated the U.S. as cargo ship stowaways from Asia about 15 years ago and have proliferated in the past two years. Th...