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Get paid for biodamage to your strawberry guava trees caused by the government's biocontrol insect.

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Find out more about the biocontrol attack planned against the strawberry guava. Go to www.SaveTheGuava.com.

Here's how to determine the economic value of a tree: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/hort/ext/Pubs/HO/HO_201.pdf

Here is an interesting story that is the opposite of this one. Instead of releasing a biocontrol insect to attack an ornamental tree, thereby reducing its value as with the strawberry guava case, here is the use of a biocontrol insect to stop an infestation that was causing esthetic damage to ash trees. It shows how expensive esthetic damage to trees can be. It's called, "A Cost/Benefit Analysis of the Ash Whitefly Biological Control Program in California". Go to page 5 at this website: http://www.agecon.ucdavis.edu/extension/update/issues/summer98.pdf

Here is an interesting quote from that report:

"Previous research has shown that healthy street trees significantly contribute to the aesthetic beauty of our urban areas. Not surprisingly, people will demand pest control to protect the aesthetic beauty of street trees with levels of defoliation as small as 5%. Therefore, the preservation of a tree’s aesthetic beauty by controlling pest infestations can result in substantial benefits to the community. In addition, healthy trees contribute significantly to property values, whereas defoliated trees cause property values to decrease."

And here is a legal case in Florida where the public won a class action lawsuit against the government for taking healthy citrus trees as part of citrus canker eradication. Owners of trees that were taken by the government received full compensation for damages, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. See the website www.citruscankerlitigation.com/citrus/default.htm .