U.S. Water News Online
TRENTON, Neb. -- Federal officials may release bush-eating beetles at Swanson Reservoir to help rid the drought-depleted lake of saltcedar shrubs that are guzzling groundwater and crowding the lakeshore.
Debra Eberts, a botanist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Denver, said her agency is considering releasing the insects known as saltcedar leaf beetles to help control saltcedar growing freely where the water has receded.
If the lake is approved for the bio-control project and the proper permits are obtained, beetles could be released starting next spring, she said.
The larvae and the adult beetle eat the leaves of the saltcedar and scrape tissue off small twigs. ``They don't need to eat everything to kill it,'' she said.
Eberts said the same beetles were released at a 100-acre research site in Pueblo, Colo., in 2001, and in its third year, the insects have defoliated most of the saltcedar in the area.
The beetle is eating only the saltcedar, Eberts said.
``It's not jumping onto the cottonwoods even with the saltcedar defoliated,'' she said. ``These guys won't tolerate anything other than saltcedar.''
If the beetles are released at Swanson Reservoir, Eberts strongly recommends that local weed specialists and the state Game and Parks Commission have a ``revegetation plan'' ready to implement as the saltcedar dies out.
``We don't want the land to go back to another weed,'' she said.
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