Sun-Sentinel, Wednesday April 30, 1997

JOHN GROGAN

Commentary

Will hungry beetle hatch big trouble?

When I think of things South Florida could use more of, I think of classrooms and common courtesy.

I never think of bugs.

We don't top the heap in many things. But when it comes to creepy crawly things, we pretty much can stand up and shout:"We're Number One!"

The Certified Pest Control Operators didn't hold their annual convention here last month for nothing.

We've got them all: from house-eating termites to fire-spitting ants to man-eating mildew to cockroaches big enough to see over the wheel of a Volkswagen.

South Florida needs more bugs like Grand Forks needs more rain.

I don't know about you, but whenever I'm out for a walk, mosquitoes and no-see-ums descending in B-52 formation, I always find myself wishing, "Shoot, if only there were more bugs." Now we have one more to add to the list.

Local dignitaries gathered on the edge of the Everglades last week to release an imported Australian beetle with a voracious appetite.

The more the merrier, I suppose.

If at first you fail...

Biologists promise the little bug has a taste for only one plant: the pesty melaleuca tree that was introduced a century ago to dry up "useless" swampland and ended up choking close to half a million acres.

The hope is the beetles will devour melaleuca buds before they can drop their seed, stopping the tree-from-hell's insidious advance, while ignoring the local flora.

I sure hope they're right.

The scientists say they know what they're doing, and I have to trust them. But I always get a little nervous when man starts tinkering with nature.

We wouldn't be importing these beetles at all if some well-intentioned tinkerer hadn't brought in the melaleuca in the first place.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers thought it was improving on nature when it straightened the Kissimmee River. Now taxpayers are paying nearly $500 million to turn it back into its old meandering self again.

The Indian mongoose was imported to Hawaii as the answer to the rat problem. Instead, it wiped out entire populations of ground-nesting birds.

Ditto with kudzu, the aggressive Japanese groundcover introduced by the federal government in the 1930's to control erosion. It now smothers giant swaths of the South.

In Louisiana, a 10-pound aquatic rat imported as a cheap source of fur has procreated itself into the state's leading pest.

Hatching tomorrow's folly

In another disastrous miscalculation in the 1930's, sugar growers imported poisonous toads to battle a cane beetle. With no natural enemies, the toads proliferated, eating just about everything but the beetle.

We're smarter now, but in 100 years, what will the folks in white lab coats think of our quick fixes?

I want to know what's going to happen when the last melaleuca is gone. Will all those hungry beetles just lie down and die, or will they answer the evolutionary call to adapt to new food sources? Like, say, Florida citrus.

Coming soon to a cineplex near you: The Bug that Ate Broward!

If the beetles do surge out of control, what then? We might be forced to introduce the beetle-eating Australian lizard to wipe out the tree-eating beetles. And the lizard-eating Australian cat to hunt down the beetle-eating lizards. And...well, you get the idea.

Pretty soon, the government will be giving away shotguns so people can fight back.

I know. I'm getting ahead of myself. If the experts say it's safe, it has to be safe.

Doesn't it?

John Grogan's column appears every Sunday and Wednesday. Write him at 200 E. Las Olas Boulevard., Fort Lauderdale 33301, or by e-mail:jgrogn@aol.com