Beetle invasion expected

Jul 24, 2013 1 min read

To the editor:

I read in a recent issue of the Cape Coral Breeze the article you wrote concerning the release of the Asian Beetle to control the spread of the “Air Potato Plant”. I think that this is a terrible mistake involving replacing one invasive thing with another equally or worse invasive species.

I have just moved to Cape Coral a few months ago from southern Wisconsin where we were plagued with Asiatic leaf beetles which are extremely bad.

These beetles start out eating all the leaves on raspberries and then quickly move on to fruit trees, grape vines and other garden vegetables. The farmers hate them and have to spray their soybean fields to control them.

I wonder who dreams up these ideas without researching them? A few years from now some people are going to be extremely disappointed.

Gene Blair

Cape Coral