USDA Interagency Research Forum on Invasive Species

General Topics:

• Invasive Plants and Their Impacts
• Gypsy Moth Research
• Risk Assessment for Invasive Species
• Exotic Wood Boring Insects
• Biological Control

• Alien Forest Pathogens
• International Forest Insects and Disease Reports

Overview

The USDA Forum on Invasive Species is an annual meeting that began in 1990 as the "USDA Interagency Gypsy Moth Research Forum". The purpose was to coordinate research on the European and Asian gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar L., among USDA agency scientists and their university cooperators by facilitating the exchange of information and data and encouraging their collaboration. This assured a degree of accountability and minimized the duplication of effort among the many scientists who conduct research on this serious forest pest. This meeting gained added stature when scientists from Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in North America learned of this meeting and began to attend and participate. The involvement of foreign scientists from countries where gypsy moth and related species have been native pests for centuries has added a different perspective to the meeting and has enhanced international cooperation, particularly in the use of biologically based technologies.

Consequently, beginning with the 1996 meeting, the scope of the Interagency Research Forum was broadened and the Program Committee has devoted a significant portion of the agenda to highlight the threat of select non-native invasive species. In recent years, a complex of non-native species (NIS) including the Asian Longhorned beetle, large-pine shoot moth, hemlock woolly adelgid, cedar emerald ash bores and Asian gypsy moth have been introduced into North American and collectively threaten our North American forest and urban ecosystems. Additionally, pathogens (e.g. Beech Bark Disease, sudden oak death, and butternut canker) and exotic weeds(e.g. mile-a-minute weed and kudzu) contribute to our management problems.