SHARPSHOOTERS
As Director of Emergency Management in New South Wales, Dr Leigh Pilkington is on the lookout for a mottled brown leafhopper with transparent wings and bulging eyes. There are ivory spots running along its abdomen, and like the fleas that spread bubonic plague throughout the world, in its mouth it carries doom.
People aren't at risk: only plants. Ones that bear grapes, citrus, and olives are particularly susceptible though numerous others have fallen prey. Out of over 600 invasive plant pests threatening the country, the glassy winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis, ranks in the top 10, poised as it is to destroy Australia's vineyards one grapevine at a time. Of the 175 plant species that sharpshooters are keen to feed on, including eucalypt types, all but one grow in Australia.
“If it arrives with the pathogen Xylella fastidiosa then it's going to be a massive problem,” Pilkington says.
reigns supreme as number one among all biosecurity threats to Australia's agricultural crops. It's a lethal bacterium that lives in the mouths of sharpshooters, infecting and killing the plants they eat. A living sharpshooter hasn't been discovered in Australia yet, though dead ones turn up occasionally in the cargo hold of airplanes landing here. If someone stumbles upon a live insect resembling this highly mobile harbinger of viniculture ruin, it must be reported within 24 hours by calling the Exotic Plant Pest Hotline at 1800 084 881, which triggers a series of defensive measures that play out
