{"id":7833,"date":"2012-01-31T03:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T08:11:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-13T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T22:22:11","slug":"facing-environmental-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardern.co.za\/2012\/01\/facing-environmental-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing Environmental Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Government Inspectors search carefully for Asian Long Horned Beetles in our mixed shrub border amidst Japanese ground bamboo ( Sasa vietchii). I think that they enjoyed some of the species that we had, asking for the names of all of our Japanese maples, Davidia and Stewartia species.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n \n<\/div>\n \nThen, this morning, I awoke to scene reminiscent of those found in one of those bad SciFi channel disaster films – 5AM, a knock on the door, and a team of agents in uniforms, clipboards, cameras and various scientific devices began sweeping through our garden. As I picked up the morning paper, I thought ” Maybe a UFO crash landed in the back yard”, as a helicopter roared overhead.<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \nMen and women in uniform, entered the garden from all entrances.They opened gates, looked in the greenhouse, and out in the woods out back, spot lights, and a crowd of officers in safety vests looking up into the trees. Actually, most of these very official looking officers are students, employed by the government’s beetle buster program. And all were very polite, and curious about many of our rare trees. The good news? We ‘passed’ this phase, although I was instructed to call the government program for next steps.<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n \n ![]() \nWe passed this phase!<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n \n ![]() Two years ago, the only infested area was a small area near Chicago, a section in New Jersey, and our city in Massachusetts. As you can see, the threatened area has been expanding. To learn more about the Asian Long Horned Beetle, please visit the US Government’s Beetle Buster site.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been waiting for two years to write about this – and to avoid any bad juju, I just avoided writing about it. But…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n |