URGENT! Invasive & Potentially Devastating Japanese Beetle in Vancouver - PLEASE READ AND SHARE

I got this email mail the other day from the City of Vancouver's Green Streets program (of which I am a member). I think all gardeners should read this information and share it with friends and neighbors.

"Hello Green Streets Gardeners,
An invasive species known as the Japanese beetle has recently been discovered in the False Creek area in Vancouver (this area encompasses Burrard Street south to West/East 12th Avenue and east to Clark Drive).

It can significantly damage landscape plants, ornamental plants, fruit and vegetable gardens, nurseries, orchards, and agricultural crops (the list of plants preferred by this beetle includes fruit trees - apple, plum, apricot, cheery, peach and plum - Japanese maples and roses).

As a Green Streets gardener, we hope you can help us in sharing information with your fellow gardeners and in supporting the City’s efforts to eradicate this pest.

What you can do:
* Report sightings online
* Remove as many adult Japanese beetles as possible by hand and put them in soapy water to kill them (it’s easier to capture them in the early morning because the dew makes it harder for them to fly).
* Keep the dead beetles and notify the CFIA about the findings.
* Attract birds by putting out a birdhouse and bird food.
* If your garden or home lawn is within the affected area, consider hiring a certified pesticide applicator to treat your lawn with Acelepryn. (Treatment on private property is not required).

Get more tips from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency

What the City is doing:

We will be treating public land within the established treatment area with a federally regulated larvicide. The larvicide targets root eating grubs, and will not impact people, pets, mammals, birds, bees, butterflies or other animals."

The City is also asking that you refrain from removing soil or plants with soil from the affected area

This it the link for reporting sightings:

Contact Us - Canadian Food Inspection Agency

 

Stickied thread so it stays at the top.

 

The May & Lorne Brown Park is at Beach and Hornby Streets, just inside the Downtown border, not within the quarantine area. I haven't noticed this treatment sign at other parks yet. This one is not so well used, emphasized by the addition of a huge table that can't really be used, which I suppose is artwork, but it seems ironically mean in a park to install artwork that looks like something you'd want to use in a park but can't. Sorry, off-topic rant.

 

Regulated areas to stop spread of Japanese beetle expanded for 2023.

 

What do they look like.
We have a 500m2 garden in North Burnaby so they travel that far? Do they fly ?

 

See the first attachment in the first posting, which answers all your questions.
For information specific to Burnaby, see Japanese Beetle | City of Burnaby.