Invasive alien pests and quarantine organisms
Alien species - favoured by climate change and globalisation - are spreading ever more frequently, more rapidly, and in some cases invasively. Quarantine pests are invasive organisms with a high potential for causing damage. They are notifiable. The department carries out various monitoring activities in order to ensure the early detection of quarantine pests in forest areas of Baden-Württemberg.
If quarantine pests occur, quarantine zones must be established, in which extensive monitoring and control measures are then carried out. The ultimate objective is to prevent the establishment and spread of the quarantine pests.
Currently significant quarantine pests are for example:
- the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis),
- the pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus),
- the emerald ash borer (Agrilus viridis),
- the fungus affecting walnuts known as thousand cankers disease (Geosmithia morbida),
- the bacteria Xylella fastidiosa.
The department also expects to be increasingly concerned in the future with pests on alternative tree species.