KRM Branch 18 October 2021

For our October general meeting, we were pleased to welcome guest speaker Laura Fagan from the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. The topic of Laura’s talk and presentation was an introduction to the MyPestGuide App plus details of how it is used to record sightings. The MyPestGuide App was established to encourage everyone (public, industry, and government) to report observations of any common, interesting or possibly exotic pests. Laura explained that MyPestGuide arose out of the importance of Australia’s bio-security to its environment and economy, including its continuing access to overseas markets for its products.

The App consists of a Reporter module, three field guides plus some decision management tools for use by those involved in primary industry. The use of the App will help in the early detection of pests newly arrived in Australia or that are moving outside their known range. The App is backed up by a number of taxonomic experts in insect and plant pest species that review the observation data that is submitted to the App. The MyPestGuide team shares the same goal as Taxonomy Australia – to document all species in Australia. Laura then gave examples of how the App has enabled pest outbreaks to be identified and monitored. For more information on the MyPestGuide App go to the following web page:

An extension of the MyPestGuide App is its use in capturing sightings for the annual Bio Security Blitz program that generally runs for a period of one month in spring. It was last run in October/November 2020. It is not being run in 2021. Part of the format of the Blitz was a series of 30 daily challenges that participants were encouraged to complete. The results for 2020 show a total of 3048 organism reports (2733 from WA) from 847 people reporting.

To finalise her presentation, Laura gave a brief outline of one current pest that the DPIRD is concerned about, the Polyphagous Shot-hole Borer (Euwallacaea fornicatus), a beetle native to Asia, that poses a threat to a range of amenity trees, native vegetation and the fruit and nut tree industries (particularly avocado, citrus, and stone fruit). The audience was then invited to take copies of a quick guide for use of the App plus a small card that contained a magnifier plus a ruler to allow measurement of specimens found. The audience thanked Laura for the very interesting presentation.

Colin Prickett