Invasive pests' ride aboard fence shipment ends at Seattle port

Even the inspectors acknowledged they didn't have to search hard.

Examining a shipment of fencing coming through Seattle's port from China last year, agriculture examiners from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) saw so many crop-sensitive invasive caterpillars they actually had to chase them down.

"They were everywhere," said Luca Furnare, agriculture specialist with CBP. "Usually you might actually see a few. But there were so many of them in this case they started crawling away."

After scrambling to catch and kill the tree- and plant-killing pests, the alert Seattle inspectors researched the shipping company and learned it had more shipments coming in nationwide. So over the past several months, inspectors began holding all fence shipments from the company coast-to-coast, uncovering an assortment of pests that if unstopped could have damaged thousands of dollars in crops.

They found gall midges, which feed on plant tissue and can attack wheat, pear and raspberry cane; Noctuidae moth larvae, a family of invasive pests that includes cutworms, which eat away the bases of plants like lettuce and broccoli; and striped rice borers, stem-eating beetles that can destroy entire fields of rice.

Once confronted, the shipper agreed to seek new sources for its material.

The introduction of invasive species into the U.S. costs roughly $100 billion in crop loss every year and puts thousands of native plants and animals at risk, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The rise of global trade only makes such threats more acute.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com