Palm Sunday

 With Yanita Yancheva:

AP, Uruguay confronts a powerful new threat to its palm trees: A tiny red bug

Across the small South American country, palm trees are falling prey to a fierce enemy measuring just 5 centimetres (2 inches) in length: The red palm weevil. First the elegant fronds droop. Then the tell-tale holes appear in the trunk. Soon enough, the tree is tilting toward collapse.

The weevil has devoured thousands of Uruguay’s palm trees since its unexplained arrival from Southeast Asia in 2022. But authorities are only now waking up to the threat as the landscape of municipalities transforms and fears grow that the country’s beloved palms could be wiped out.

 

“We are late in addressing this,” Estela Delgado, the national director of biodiversity at Uruguay’s Ministry of Environment, acknowledged last month. “But we are doing so with great commitment and seriousness.”

The insect and its devastating impact can be found in 60 countries around the world but nowhere else in South America. Authorities first detected it in the town of Canelones, bordering Montevideo, where the insect killed more than 2,000 palm trees in less than a month.

Linked at The Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Gother Than Thou up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain.