Freiburg: Harmful Japanese beetle registered in Germany for the first time

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Japanese beetles (symbolic picture): The pests like strawberries, beans, corn, wine and roses, among other things

Photo: Olaf Zimmermann / dpa

For the first time in Germany, a specimen of the harmful Japanese beetle has been proven to have fallen into a trap.

According to the Freiburg Regional Council, this is the first officially confirmed find of a living Japanese beetle in this country.

So far, there have been only a few indications of individual finds, but the authorities have not been able to verify.

The male was discovered in early November in a so-called pheromone trap near the Freiburg freight yard.

According to a spokesman for the regional council, it was dead by then. But it must have been alive to get into the trap.

In mid-July, a male beetle got caught in a pheromone trap near the Basel freight station in neighboring Switzerland.

The German experts then called on the public to be vigilant.

Citizens reported hundreds of suspected cases to the LTZ in Karlsruhe.

Often it was about other animals, but there was also a dead specimen of the Japanese beetle in Baden-Württemberg.

According to the information at the time, the animal was in a delivery of industrial goods from Poland.

The pests also like wine and roses

The current find and the previous one in Basel show that the probability that Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) live in Baden-Württemberg is increasing.

The official plant protection service will monitor the location and other risk locations such as freight yards and truck parking spaces more closely when the flight time begins in May next year, the spokesman announced.

According to the Agricultural Technology Center (LTZ) Augustenberg, Japanese beetles can cause severe damage to fruit trees, strawberries, beans, maize, vines, roses and many other shrub and tree species.

The grubs - i.e. the larvae - feed mainly on grass roots and could destroy entire meadows and pastures in large numbers.

According to the LTZ, adult Japanese beetles are around one centimeter tall and look similar to domestic garden, May or June beetles.

The Japanese beetle, however, has five white tufts of hair on each side of the abdomen and two at the end of the body.

The pronotum has a noticeably green-metallic shimmer.

Restrictions on plant transport, close-knit nets, insecticides and fungi could be measures to prevent the spread of Popillia japonica.

The risk of importation was particularly high via travel and goods traffic on the traffic arteries on the Upper Rhine or the highways on Lake Constance.

ptz / dpa