Originally published in the FSS newsletter, October 2022.
The gradual and seemingly spontaneous growth of this insect’s population through the United States, and so many other countries in North America, South America, Europe, Eurasia, and further through Asia from where it originally hailed, makes it a case study in invasive species. Halyomorpha halys, the brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), is a perfect example of what makes an invasive species, in that it thrives well outside of its original ecosystem, causing harm to the environment, economy, or people’s health. Like so many other invasive species this is a byproduct of a global economy, and as technologies in transportation of people and goods become more readily available, so does the potential risk of an invasive species gaining a foothold in a new part of our world.
A pest that moved with trade
There are plenty of examples of trade going back to ancient times, but the most notable increase came around 4800 BCE with the domestication of horses in central Asia, allowing traders to travel farther faster and promoting trade routes to develop over the next 3,000 years. Around 3000 BCE Egyptians began developing ships used for cargo. Large boats for this time started around 75 feet long and no wider than a pontoon boat, were being used to cross seas, and within 1,500 years developed into 170-foot vessels, much sturdier for the conditions and with significantly greater capacity. While these were remarkable advancements for the time, nothing compares to the development in the last 300 years: massive vessels dedicated to the movement of previously unmatched volumes of bulk goods from 1852; planes carrying mail in bulk from 1911, developing into dedicated cargo transportation by the 1920s; and most recently the standardized shipping container, invented in 1956, which refined the process of getting goods from truck to rail to sea and reduced ship times at port by up to three weeks.
Where it stands in the US
The nearly global spread of the brown marmorated stink bug is certainly tied to these developments. In the US the BMSB was originally documented in Pennsylvania in 1998, and by March of 2021 had been documented in all of the lower 48 states with the exception of South Dakota and Wyoming. Seven states report them as nuisance pests, 14 states report agricultural concerns and nuisance pests, and 12 states report severe agricultural problems because of BMSB populations.
What export treatment now requires
Proactive measures for BMSB prevention in Australia and New Zealand were implemented in 2016, requiring only a six-hour fumigation at high concentrations. In the following years many changes came, including lengthened exposure windows, stricter temperature requirements, increased auditing practices, intense documentation requirements, and eventually a very in-depth vetting process to ensure that United States fumigation companies and their employees dealing in the treatment of containers for the BMSB schedule were individually approved by the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries before conducting approved treatments for the specified season.
The vetting process separating approved offshore treatment providers for BMSB regulations from other export fumigation companies is a challenging and unique process. The required specific detail of the reporting, the testing and application stages, and the short window for submissions are designed to separate the accurate from the inaccurate in a way that is unmatched in many other export lanes. For companies like FSS this is a welcome level of oversight, allowing the destination country the ability to trust and verify the treatments, and to determine accountability for failure. Doing it right and doing it often has become the standard. As goods arrive and populations of the BMSB are found inside containers, more countries of origin are added and more exported goods become target goods. The effort to prevent the establishment of BMSB populations in Australia and New Zealand is one of unmatched proportions, and it continues to report improved results annually.