Date published: 2005/03/15
The BBC says:
A UK-wide survey is being launched to track an alien ladybird that threatens the existence of native species.
The harlequin (Harmonia axyridis) was first spotted in Britain in September last year and is largely confined to the South East.
But the invader is a voracious predator that easily out-competes home bugs for food and is likely to spread north.
Scientists want gardeners and wildlife enthusiasts to report sightings of the pest to www.harlequin-survey.org.
The launch of the survey, which takes place at London's Natural History Museum, is timed to coincide with the coming of milder spring weather.
"I understand from the Met Office that we could have temperatures of 17-19 Celsius by the end of the week and that will wake the ladybirds up," Dr Michael Majerus, of Cambridge University, told the BBC News website.
"We're hoping not only to monitor the harlequin and its impact but also to use the whole study as a model for how to deal with invasive species."
Yes, so-called conservationists are control freaks and like to play God. They decide which species are allegedly acceptable in the UK and which are not, dependent on some arbitrary date when the species first arrived. And those "alien" species that are too new and "troublesome" by some arbitrary criterion should be exterminated and the "native" ones encouraged. If anyone used the same phraseology when talking about humans as these scientists do when talking about plants and animals then they would be deemed racist and beyond the pale.
As it happens, it is not that easy to identify this ladybird (just go to the websites and see if you can really figure it out) and one can just imagine hordes of enthusiasts up and down the country massacring ladybirds (= ladybugs to some people) with little discrimination. Around ten years ago in Cambridge there was one summer where there was a "plague" of ladybirds and ever since then there have hardly been any, so perhaps this new species will bring the overall population up again.
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