Totana City Council recently held its first meeting of the Standing Committee Monitoring of red palm weevil to address proposals for actions aimed at containment and eradication of this pest in the palms.
The committee comprises one representative from each group of municipal and municipal technicians, Pedro Vera Calin, Municipal Agricultural Engineer, Antonio Sanchez Canovas, in his capacity as Head of Environment and Municipal Veterinarian, and representatives of groups and professionals affected by this pest.
The "red palm weevil" is a plague that affects the palms, mainly canary date palms and Washingtonias.
The first outbreak appeared in the Region of Murcia in 2005 and in 2006 officially declared the existence of plague in the Autonomous Community, which carried a significant risk to plant health.
Consequently an order of January 2006 set a binding protocol performances whose competence holds the Plant Health Service of the Directorate General of Food Industry and Agricultural Training of the Autonomous Community of Murcia
In Totana, the technicians responsible for the management of parks and gardens and conservation of rural roads and acted from the outset with the utmost care to contain the problem.
Currently, preventative treatments are being made all the palms of municipal ownership, by way of example: June to December 2011 has been carried out five general treatments of 4,000 liters of insecticide each, representing more than 18 liters per tree .
Traps have also been installed sampling to estimate the density of infection in our municipality.
