Sun-Sentinel,
Sunday, April 27, 1997 By NEIL SANTANIELLO
The bugs were passed out on Saturday at Everglades Holiday Park, 10 to a person. U.S.Rep E. Clay Shaw went first. Plucking a grayish-black snout beetle from his plastic box, Shaw slipped the bug onto the tip of a slender young melaleuca tree pulled toward the ground. Florida had just unleashed its first biological weapon in the fight against the melaleuca tree. "Go forth and multiply," said Ted Center, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist. Scientists hope the 3/8 inch beetle will become the bug that ate the plant that ate South Florida. Melaleuca- possibly the state's most hated noxious weed- has infested about a half -million acres of South Florida since its introduction here at the turn of the century. The trees have spread at an average rate of 52 acres a day, turning Everglades wetlands into melaleuca thickets. Now it's the snout beetle to the rescue. In its homeland of Australia, the insect nibbles on the growing tips of melaleuca seedlings and saplings, stunting their ability to drop seeds and spread. Scientists hope the bug will do the same damage here. Scientists, environmental regulators, and governments have waited anxiously for Saturday's release, which followed five years of snout beetle studies conducted under tight security in Gainesville. About 125 researchers, politicians and curious families got into the act on Saturday, following Shaw's lead. About 300 bugs marched obediently to the only food they'll eat- fresh green melaleuca leaves. "This is like decorating a Christmas tree," Fort Lauderdale resident Tari Dachton told her daughter Jennifer, 10, as a bug hopped from the girl's thumb to a small tree. |
