SAN DIEGO — People living in one Del Mar neighborhood say their palm trees have been dying by the dozens.
An infestation of the South American Palm Weevil is to blame.
The South American Palm Weevil has been in San Diego for more than a decade, but experts say they're attacking more and more trees because their population has grown.
Infestation
“Not only did they have to completely remove the trees, they said the stumps were also diseased,” said Brittainy Estrada.
Estrada has had seven trees removed from her home in two years, including three this past week.
“That’s why we moved here. Because of the trees, because of the landscape,” said Estrada.
Estrada says the South American Palm Weevil has killed so many trees in her Sun Valley neighborhood, it's changed the landscape everywhere.
San Diego county is the only place in the state where you'll find the South American Palm Weevil.
The large black beetles were first discovered in southern San Diego back in 2011.
Since then, they've moved north, killing thousands of trees along the way.
"Adults will fly to the top of palm trees, mostly Canary Island Date Palms, which are definitely their preferred host. They will then lay their eggs in the top of the growing portion of the palm. The eggs then hatch into larvae. It's those larvae of the beetles that then start to feed on the growing tissue of the palm," said Eric Middleton, an integrative pest management advisor at the University of California Agricultural Natural Resources.
Tips
Middleton says when people see their trees are damaged, it's usually too late to do anything about it.
"Your fronds start dying, they begin falling over. Your tree starts to look like a brown umbrella, and it's very unlikely to recover," said Middleton.
Still, Middleton says there are some preventative measures you can take. For starters, he suggests buying traps to see if weevils are present in the first place.
"There's commercially available pheromones which will specifically attract these weevils," said Middleton.
If weevils are present, contact an arborist or pest control company to take care of the rest.
"Basically, what those different people will be doing is they will be applying insecticides to your tree preventatively before the weevils get there, and then you just sort of get stuck on this pesticide treadmill where you have to continuously be applying these chemistries over and over again, to make sure that the weevils never get established in your tree and never start to do that damage," said Middleton.
Unfortunately, it's an added cost to maintain your trees. But, so is the price to remove them if the South American Palm Weevil gets in.
“I will replace them. I love the trees, but unfortunately, I'll have to replace them with a different variety,” said Estrada.
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