By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editor’s note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series.
In the polls the competition was close. Fifty-three percent of readers chose the gypsy moth and 47 percent chose the European starling.
In the brackets, 44 percent of bracketeers chose the the gypsy moth compared to the starling that sat in second place with 35 percent. Other bracketeers chose invasives that failed to pass Round 1.
But here at Echo we beg to differ and pulled a little Kansas vs. Virginia Common Wealth underdog maneuver: The European Starling wins!
It’s true that the gypsy moth has cost the Great Lakes region a lot of money, time and heartache, but at this point it is more controlled than the starling.
“We now have a fantastic way of protecting [trees] where you can slow down the spread,” Diss-Torrance said. “We can give people nine months forewarning if they’re going to have a problem in a certain area.”
Problems with the moth also seem to be intermittent.
“Gypsy Moths are a forest outbreak species …we have typically have problem with it every 10 years,” Diss-Torrance said.
On the other hand, the starling has a more constant presence and hones a highly diverse fighting skill-set: It flocks in large numbers, bullies native cavity-nesting birds and is a potential air safety issue.
“There’s information that suggests that starling … roosts that hang out near airports are potential air safety issues. They tend to get sucked into the engines,” said Anne Hobbs, a public information specialist with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
And let’s not forget the starling’s notorious fecal airstrikes that can spread diseases like meningitis and salmonellosisn.
“If you’ve got 50,000 starlings roosting in a downtown neighborhood,” Hobbs said. “Fifty thousand starlings are dropping an incredible amount of feces. That can be a health issue.”