Australia’s Voracious Termites Are Now “Driven by Climate Change”
10 hours ago Eric Worrall 22 Comments
Essay by Eric Worrall
Termites were well managed by our ancestors, but in the wake of banning powerful insecticides like DDT, they are now apparently a climate problem.
Hungry and on the march as the climate heats up: Termites in Australia
By Frances Vinall
January 1, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EST
TENNANT CREEK, Australia — In a forgotten restaurant behind a gas station in this country’s red center, only metal and plastic parts remain unscathed. Chris Cook grabs at a timber door frame, which crumples like paper in his hand.
“This has all just collapsed,” says Cook, a manager at Territory Pest Control in Australia’s Northern Territory. He eyes boards hanging in ragged pieces from the ceiling. Since he last visited the abandoned building three years ago, thousands of uninvited guests have been busy.
The destruction at Galaxy Auditorium restaurant at Wycliffe Well — a tiny highway stop calling itself the “UFO capital of Australia” — is the destruction that could lie ahead for many places on the continent unless Mastotermes darwiniensis can be stopped. These termites are the last survivors of an ancestral species that shared space with dinosaurs 150 million years ago. They’re voracious and relentless. And because of climate change, they, like their fellow kin, are expanding their range.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/01/australias-voracious-termites-are-now-driven-by-climate-change/
