Webinar: Canadian Biocontrol Experience: Past, Present and Future

Canadian Biocontrol Experience: Past, Present and Future

Organized by: North America Invasive Species Management Association

Biological control efforts in Canada have a long history of success, with the first programs targeting invasive agricultural pests in the 1930s. Canada’s first weed biocontrol program soon followed, with herbivorous insects from Europe used to control St. John’s wort. In collaboration with British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests, a long-time funder of biocontrol research in Canada, we are now reevaluating Canada’s oldest weed biological programs, to assess their contemporary efficacy (St. John’s wort, spotted knapweed). We will discuss our findings in these old systems before turning to more recent programs that are successfully controlling invasive plants in Canada using agents that have not been available in the US (i.e. houndstongue). We will then highlight study systems that are in the earliest stages of on-the-ground biocontrol in Canada and show promise (i.e. garlic mustard), before discussing new options on the horizon for invasive plants of growing concern (parrot’s feather, Tree of heaven – and its linkage to management efforts for the invasive pest insect, spotted lanternfly). Together, these study systems serve to outline Canada’s long, successful and ongoing biological control programs for invasive plants that are concerns globally.

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