This unintentional trade in pests goes in both directions, Wood said. Red turpentine beetles in mine timbers from Washington now infest 500,000 hectares of timberland in China. The pinewood nematode, a type of parasitic worm harmless to conifers in North America, got into Japan in the 1970s and is a destructive pest there. Sometimes pests show up in the most unlikely places. John Bell, based in New Westminster, B.C., with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said his inspectors discovered a major pest of Asian pine and hardwoods in a shipment of paintball gun holsters.
Wood is pessimistic.
Regulations designed to prevent importing wood and wood products that may contain pests and inspections at ports are simply inadequate, he said. The biggest threat is wood used for pallets, crates and other packing materials in container shipments and in such products as the big wooden spools used to ship cable and wires. Wood said 52 per cent of marine shipments contain wood. Long Beach, the largest American port on the West Coast, handles 3.8 million containers annually and of those that have softwood packing materials, about three per cent get checked for pests. Some 5.8 per cent of those turn out to have pests.