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A recent Internet rumor warning that Formosan termite-infested mulch is being shipped around the country from the states affected by last year's hurricanes appears to be false, agriculture officials said.
A state agriculture official and termite researchers, meanwhile, cautioned mulch buyers to keep an eye out and immediately report the termites if they are found in bags of the chipped wood.
"So far, we have had no incidents of material moving from a quarantined area to a non-quarantined area," said Mike Tagert, the director of the Bureau of Plant Industry with Mississippi's Department of Agriculture and Commerce.
The rumor had it that infested trees, which had been blown down by Katrina, Rita and Wilma, were being chipped and resold in other parts of the country.
Mulch is an important component of landscaping and gardening. Wood chips are spread around plants to keep moisture in the soil around their roots.
The Mulch & Soil Council, in a release responding to the Internet rumor, said that it would be very unlikely, even if an infested tree was ground into mulch, that the soft-bodied termite could withstand the chipping machine or the high temperatures inside of a sealed bag of mulch.
Tagert said that 10 agricultural field investigators were canvassing the South Mississippi quarantine area looking for people moving vegetation or wood products out.
"We are making certain that we are not transporting Formosans to counties that do not yet have them documented," Tagert said.
Concern about Formosan termites stems from their rapid march across much of the South and their voracious appetite for wood. Research has shown that Formosans can eat up to 1,000 pounds of wood a year, compared to the seven pounds that native termites eat. University of Hawaii researchers have found that a single colony can eat the entire structure of a house within two years.
The termites cause around $1.5 billion in damage a year nationally.
A quarantine, making it a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine to transport vegetation and wood out of the infested area, has been set in 25 Mississippi counties, from the Coast up to Jackson.
It is not illegal to transport wood within infested areas that are already under quarantine.
But Dr. Jianzhong Sun, a Mississippi State University entomologist who specializes in Formosans, said that whether the insect is spread through bags of mulch or by accident, the quarantine is not stopping the termites' invasion.
"The industries hired to clean up the millions of yards of debris left by the storms are shredding these trees for use as landscape mulches and other uses," he said. "Subterranean termites are being inadvertently spread to new areas, which will result in another disastrous consequence of the storms within a few years."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks the Formosans in parts of 14 states. The highly social and aggressive insects have the potential to infest more areas throughout the South before they reach the limit of their range