The owner of an orchard in Puna, on Hawaii island, recently saw half of his trees killed due to a pest. He said it started with a healthy avocado tree, about a month after he purchased some mulch. "A ball of soil was shoveled out of the truck and I saw all these crawly things in it and I wasn't sure if it was termites or what."
The grower sprayed it with Raid and forgot about it. Until his avocado tree, about 20 feet from the mulch started dying. Then several months later he noticed his citrus trees were showing similar signs.
The culprit is likely a type of longhorned beetle, discovered on the window screen of a resident in Hawaiian acres on the Big Island in 2009.
"The longhorn beetle is called Acalolepta aesthetica and it's native to Australia," said Darcy Oishi, the biological control section chief of the Department of Agriculture. Although they've collected a number of specimens of the years, they still know very little about A. aesthetica since it doesn't cause this type of damage in Australia.
"It was found at large, we didn't know what it was doing, we couldn't get an ID," said Oishi. The beetle lays an egg and when it hatches the grub bores through the tree creating tunnels in the trunk.
"It causes a lot of boring damage. It will bore into wood and create wounds that will weep and basically weaken the plant and make it open to more infections by diseases and more vulnerable to death," explained Oishi.
According to khon2.com, there are only a handful on plants officials can identify as hosts including: the kukui nut tree, breadfruit, various citrus trees, Queen Sago palm and cacao trees. Other plants it possibly affects are the gunpowder tree and avocado trees.
There are already 500 cacao trees infected on the Big Island and farmers are afraid. At this point the beetle is only on three farms but, "it could get worse because there's a whole bunch of farms around here that haven't got the beetles yet, but we can guarantee it's coming."
