Asian Longhorned Beetle Invades Facebook!

The Asian longhorned beetle now has its own group on Facebook. Join up and show your support for the battle against this invasive, tree-destroying beetle. Members also get the latest ALB news, notices about upcoming outreach events, photos and more.

Let's talk about Plant Pests

Are you part of a garden club, environmental group, or other organization that wants to learn more about the invasive insect pests, plant pathogens and weeds that threaten our state? The Massachusetts Introduced Pests Outreach Project offers free lectures and training sessions covering everything from the Asian longhorned beetle to pathogens like sudden oak death, to invasive plants like mile-a-minute vine.

Because there is no charge for these sessions, they are restricted to groups of 40 or more attendees. MIPOP can also provide your organization with educational materials like fact sheets, posters and informational videos. For more information, email Jennifer Forman Orth, the State Plant Pest Survey Coordinator for Massachusetts, at jennifer.forman-orth@state.ma.us, or call 617-626-1735.

Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts

Tuesday and Thursday of this week the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts held its annual Speaker's Program Workshop. I participated on both days and it was a wonderful opportunity to meet folks from garden clubs across the state (and to meet all the other speakers as well!), speak to them about this project, and encourage them to sign up for our Pest Alert email list.


The presentation was set up to have multiple panels that can be swapped out depending on the interests of the audience, with two pests per panel, plus the project logo and URL and two smaller panels describing the project in general. For the garden clubs, I featured:

• Asian longhorned beetle and the Emerald ash borer
  
• Viburnum leaf beetle and Daylily rust
  
• Giant hogweed and Mile-a-minute vine

It took quite a bit of work (and help from kind coworkers) to produce those posters, but they'll be getting a lot of use this year, I am sure.

Ag Day!

Today was Agriculture Day at the State House, a chance for Massachusetts farmers and food producers to discuss issues and legislation affecting their farms and communities. The Department of Agricultural Resources coordinates the annual event. The Massachusetts Introduced Pests Outreach Project had some flyers at the DAR booth to advertise our website, plus a sign-up sheet for our pest alert email list (bottom left in the photo above). Mostly it was an opportunity to meet several of my contacts in person, since many of them were staffing their own booths.