A cargo ship docked near New Orleans was forced to leave the country after federal investigators discovered wood infested with an Asian bug known as tree-killing beetles that has been destroying American trees for nearly a quarter-century.
CBP authorities screening the Pan Jasmine on July 17 discovered five different types of bugs in the wood it was carrying, according to The New Orleans Advocate and The Times-Picayune. Two of the five pests, a beetle and an ant, are regarded as severe agricultural threats in the United States.
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If the wood had been offloaded into the US, it would have been put in a Louisiana landfill where the insects could crawl out and invade the local habitat, causing incalculable damage
Terri Edwards, the CBP’s New Orleans area port director said.
The 590-foot ship came to a halt approximately a mile downstream from New Orleans in the Mississippi River. It had previously left an Indian port and unloaded aluminium at Veracruz, Mexico.
Wood used to bundle metal had not been unloaded in Mexico and was spread about the vessel’s deck, which CBP officials found strange.
No reason was provided as to why the (wood) was refused discharge in Mexico, and this raised a red flag
the CBP said in a statement on Wednesday.
The wood was riddled with digging holes and sawdust. The longhorned beetle bores into wood and can consume a variety of trees in the United States, eventually killing them. It is a member of the Cerambycidae family.
Cerambycids are found only in China and the Korean peninsula. They were found in 1996 in New York City after being mistakenly imported on wooden shipment materials. Over the course of two years, the beetles damaged roughly 7,000 trees and spent $530 million in control efforts.
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Meanwhile, the Myrmicinae ant builds colonies that compete with native species and wreak havoc on crops.
Pan Jasmine, which had been ordered to leave, sailed on July 21 for Freeport, Bahamas, where wood disposal services are available.