I can’t find anything local this morning, so let’s go just about as far away as possible*: Central Australia, where the feisty Alice Springs News reports that officials are battling a huge problem with feral camels! They were brought in a century ago in an attempt to replicate the camel trains of the Arabian peninsula, [...]

A lake in Maine was (like many lakes in New England) battling water-choking milfoil - but then it discovered that its milfoil is a native variety, and therefore protected! The story is here, from the Lakes Region Weekly. From the story:
This summer, the association learned what was first believed to be bladderwort is actually low-water [...]

I don’t know what things are like where you live, but where I live, purple loosestrife seems to be retreating.

The seasonal creek/wetland that runs through my property used to be choked with with this pretty invasive, but over the last three years they have virtually disappeared. They’re also gone from my little pond, where they were doing the astonishing task of out-competing cattails. They’re gone from the bigger pond across the street, and wet areas that I drive past daily seem far less lavender-colored than they used to be.

The previous post was a jokey item about invasive species in Massachusetts - I had hardly put it up before I found (via the Aquatic Hitchhikers newsfeed) a very bad item about invasive species in Massachusetts: Zebra mussels have been found in the Bay State for the first time. The Berkshire Eagle story says these tiny mussels, which were accidentally released around the Great Lakes and have spread from California to Lake Champlain, are in Laurel Lake in western Mass.

Not surprisingly, given the number of horrible, vicious, destructive bugs that can be carried on firewood, state and federal campgrounds in New Hampshire have banned out-of-state firewood from being carried here.
Other than local firewood, only kiln-dried firewood with its original packaging and label will be allowed. Campers can still bring in firewood purchased locally or [...]

(I’ll be on the road for a couple of days, visiting colleges with the family, so postings will be light.)
The cash-strapped state is seeking private help in buying one or two Diver-Assisted Suction Harvester units to vacuum up milfoil and other invasive aquatic species from the state’s lakes and ponds. (62 lakes and 10 rivers [...]

How about some more gloomy news, to get you ready for the weekend? Science Daily notes that a study found the hemlock wooly adelgid - an invasive tree-killing pest that has begun to show up in New Hampshire - does more harm to the eastern Hemlock than expected, and does it faster. The study was [...]

Felt-soled wading boots have long been eyed as a major way that the river-choking parasite didymo (”rock snot”) moves from water body to water body - mostly via anglers, who love the boots for the traction they provide on wet-slimy rocks in streams. New Zealand, which has the worst didymo problem in the world, has [...]

With didymo sneaking down to destroy our creeks from the north, Asian longhorned beetles coming to eat our hardwood trees from the south, and milfoil continuing to choke our ponds, it seems like we’re doomed to be overrun by invasive species. So let’s celebrate the occasional vistory - such as the near eradication of the [...]

It’s Monday morning, which is depressing enough, so let’s be more depressing with three wet-blanket stories from the Globe:

A new report reiterates the extra cost and complexity of making the nation’s electric grid able to take advantage of wind and solar power.  It says that carbon reduction plans (like our own RGGI) “may force changes [...]

Experts have found Asian longhorned beetles in 28 percent of the 9,260 trees they have checked around Worcester, Mass. There are 635,000 trees within the 62 square miles of the city and parts of surrounding towns that are the regulated area. If 28 percent of all them are affected that would be 177,000 trees which would need to be cut down and shredded. Wow.

This is going to a long - and probably, in the end, futile - battle: Keeping the Asian longhorned beetle from spreading through the region’s maple trees.