Sirex Woodwasp and Foreign Marine Cargo Statistics

Potential introduction risk of .S. noctilio

The sirex woodwasp (Sirex noctilio) primarily attacks Pinus species but, occasionally, will attack other conifers in the Pinaceae family. It is a native of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, where it is rarely a pest. However, it has been accidentally introduced to many parts of the world, resulting in outbreaks in pine plantation forests in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and parts of South America (Hoebeke and others 2005). S. noctilio was intercepted at U.S. ports of entry more than 100 times between 1985 and 2000 (Hoebeke and others 2005). In early 2005, the Forest Service’s Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET) organized a team to map the risk of S. noctilio introduction and establishment in the United States. An important component of the S. noctilio introduction risk map was a ranking of United States port locations based on their relative likelihood of receiving cargo carrying the pest. This ranking was constructed using the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers foreign marine cargo statistics database. The database was queried to select records (from all years available at the time, 1997 to 2003) associated with countries with a known or accepted S. noctilio presence as well as with commodities that might harbor stowaways of this pest. The commodity categories were selected by consulting APHIS Port Interception Network data to identify commodities typically linked to the pest; commonly, these were goods that are associated with wood packaging materials. The resulting map of 151 marine ports suggests that numerous ports in the Eastern United States face a substantial risk of accidental S. noctilio introduction. In particular, several high-risk points of entry in the Southeastern United States are close to large amounts of potential host forest. Notably, a single specimen of S. noctilio was found in a trap a short distance from the port of Fulton, New York, about the time this project was undertaken. Subsequent delimiting surveys during summer 2005 detected the pest more than 30 miles inland from the port, and 2006 surveys have detected the pest as far south as Pennsylvania. Surveys for S. noctilio in other parts of the United States are ongoing, with the survey design driven by the risk maps developed for this project.