AIRCRAFT BRINGING INSECT PESTS INTO NEW ZEALAND

Wanganui Chronicle, 19 February 1949, Page 4

AIRCRAFT BRINGING INSECT PESTS INTO NEW ZEALAND

CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night (PA). —Twenty military aircraft arriving at Whenuapai and Ohakea from overseas carried an average of 13.1 insect stowaways a machine, Flying Officer Marshall Laird, of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and Zoology Department, of Victoria University College, told the Public Health Section of the Pacific Congress today. This average was much higher than 1.6 reported in Florida over a year, 1.5 at Khartoum over three years and 4.3 at Honolulu (from California) over six years, but lower than the 33.5 on 301 aircraft returning to Honolulu from the South Pacific and the Orient over the same period. Flying Officer Laird said the shortage of staff limited his inquiry to only 20 aircraft, so the figures might have little significance, but they showed that undesirable insects did, in fact, reach New Zealand in this way. In all there were 10 orders and at least 35 families of insects in 262 specimens collected. The majority of the families were represented by only one or two on each machine, indicating a wide range was likely to come aboard an aircraft.

"This emphasises the hazard of accidental introductions of insects along the course of inter-continental air routes," Flying Officer Laird said. Three species of mosquito were recorded, Including two females of a kind believed to transmit filariasis. Two indigenous species of economic importance were encountered. They were the bronze beetle, which attacked bears and small fruits, and a primary sheep maggot fly. The two latter cases indicated the need for thorough insecticidal spraying of air* craft on departure (as well as arrival) to protect other countries from New Zealand native economic pests. Incidentally, said Flying Officei Laird, a weka somehow got aboard a Tasman flying boat and was now in an Australian museum. In one case rats were found on a machine about to leave for Japan. The insects recorded in observations of 20 aircraft included cockroaches, earwigs, plant bugs, butterflies and moths, beetles, wasps, many sorts of fly and fleas. It appeared that some remained alter earlier flights, either dead or by escaping insecticidal spraying. Only 11 of the 262 were alive when collected.