A Perth council claims it's had "incredibly encouraging" results from an initial trial to stop shot-hole borer beetles from destroying trees. The City of Canning has been injecting infected trees with chemicals to kill the pests without needing to chop them down and now wants state government funding for further trials.
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00:00A quick and simple injection.
00:04That's it.
00:05Offering a new way to help save the tree canopy.
00:08Do you want to just put that in a tree or do we just keep cutting trees down?
00:12More than 4,000 trees have been destroyed in the Perth metropolitan area
00:16since the Polyphagos shot hole borer beetle was first detected in 2021.
00:21Now the City of Canning has been working with Queensland University
00:24and other groups to manage the invasive pest.
00:27So you put the plugs in first like this
00:32and then the capsule goes in after so everything is self-contained.
00:36They injected 131 trees with a mix of insecticides and fungicides.
00:42It advances the cartridge and then you just push it in.
00:46It kills both the beetle and the fungus and the fungus is what the beetle feeds on.
00:51So the tree is no longer a viable host for a beetle or the fungus.
00:55Four months since the trial started the team is claiming a breakthrough.
00:59The tree health has been preserved so the trees are in fine form.
01:04They haven't been detrimentally affected by the treatment
01:07but we're seeing dead beetles and only dead beetles.
01:09Calling for State Government funding to conduct more trials and potentially save more trees.
01:14Yeah these were marked for execution weren't they?
01:17Isn't it better to see them actually now standing and there's a very strong chance they will all survive.
01:22The State Government says it wants to see more detailed, peer reviewed results from the trial.
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