{"id":4536,"date":"2011-07-28T06:23:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T10:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4536"},"modified":"2011-08-08T13:36:28","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T17:36:28","slug":"morning-read-can-new-yorkers-stop-the-emerald-ash-borer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/07\/28\/morning-read-can-new-yorkers-stop-the-emerald-ash-borer\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read: Can New Yorkers stop the Emerald ash borer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press’s George Walsh, via the Burlington Free Press<\/a>, is exploring New York’s strategies for halting the spread of the wildly destructive ash borer — an invasive bug from Asia — that has ravaged whole forests from Michigan to western New York.<\/p>\n

He describes Crown Point resident Nanette Pelkey’s shock when she was stopped at a checkpoint and busted for carrying a small load of firewood in her trunk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put six \u2014 six \u2014 pieces of wood in the back of my car,\u201d Pelkey said, something she readily admitted when asked by an officer at an Adirondack Mountains intersection busy with folks heading to camps on a Friday evening. \u201cI had never, ever heard of that whole thing. My husband had heard of it, but I packed the car.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Experts say this is one of the reasons that stopping invasives is so tough:\u00a0 It’s not just about forcing the shipping industry, say, to toughen ballast water standards on the St. Lawrence Seaway.<\/p>\n

It requires the knowledge, and cooperation, of millions of average citizens.\u00a0 People have to be willing to check their speed boats for weed fragments before putting them in the water of a new lake.\u00a0 They have to carefully clean their angling gear.<\/p>\n

They have to not buy foreign garden or aquarium plants that could go viral.<\/p>\n

The reality is that if you view invasive species collectively as a disease spreading over the planet, humans are the most common vectors.<\/p>\n

So what do you think?\u00a0 Is it inevitable that we’ll soon be living with Emerald ash borers, creek snot, and dozens of other new, aggressive critters?\u00a0 Or can we stop the invasion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press’s George Walsh, via the Burlington Free Press, is exploring New York’s strategies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[884],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}