In Europe
In 1877, the Colorado beetle reached Germany where it was eradicated. During or immediately following WWI, it became established near USA military bases in Bordeaux and proceeded to spread by the beginning of WWII to Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. The population increased dramatically during and immediately following WWII and spread eastward, and the beetle is now found over much of the continent. After World War II, in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, almost half of all potato fields were infested by the beetle by 1950. In the EU it remains a regulated (quarantine) pest for the UK, Republic of Ireland, Balearic Islands, Cyprus, Malta and southern parts of Sweden and Finland. It is not endemic in any of these Member States, although occasional infestations occur, as in Finland in the summer of 2011, when strong winds blew from Russia, where the species is endemic.
Read more about this topic: Colorado Potato Beetle
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)