Foreign weevils to eat invasive plant

Insects from South America have been introduced to control an invasive nonnative plant that is choking the waterways of West Yorkshire.

Floating pennywort weevils have been introduced in the Aire and Calder Navigation and in one of the tributaries of the River Holme.

The scheme, a collaboration between Yorkshire Water, the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, Leeds Council, River Holme Connections and a private landowner, will use the bugs to devour floating pennywort (Hydrocotyle ranunculoide)’ which originated in Central and South America and was brought to the UK in the 1980s as an ornamental pond plant.

Since then, it moved into natural habitats where it forms dense mats on water courses, reducing oxygen for fish and aquatic insects, choking drainage and out-competing native plants. It also poses a risk to livestock.