Thirty years of flighted spongy moth policy

Thirty years of flighted spongy moth policy

When inspectors first observed flighted spongy moth complex (FSMC) larvae ballooning off a Russian vessel in the Pacific Northwest in 1991, regulatory officials from the United States (U.S.) and Canada recognized the risk of FSMC incursions associated with maritime shipping. In the more than thirty years since, the U.S. flighted spongy moth offshore vessel program has expanded, working closely with the national plant protection organizations of four regulated and four other regulating countries, to continual improve safeguarding procedures for arriving vessels. Ships are inspected and certified free of FSMC at the last port of call in regulated countries.  Once arriving in a U.S. port, these ships are reinspected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. While we continue to occasionally observe individual moths in traps, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s regulatory policy has been successful at safeguarding U.S. agriculture and natural resources from these destructive pests.