April, '16] TAYLOR: STATE QUARANTINES 299 



COOPERATION IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE . 

 QUARANTINES 



By J. Edward Taylor, Stale Horticultural Inspector, Salt Lake City, Utah 



As the establishment and enforcement of quarantines is inchided in 

 most crop pest laws, some observations in connection with their opera- 

 tion should be of interest to the members of this association although 

 the necessity for state quarantines was very much lessened by the 

 creation of the Federal Horticultural Board and it is to this source 

 that we must look for maximum protection from introduced crop pests. 

 From personal experience it would seem that our first duty is to get 

 the Federal Board to take action. If this fails, state quarantines 

 should be established under the most urgent conditions and should 

 include such commodities as a reasonable effort will allow us to effect- 

 ively control. 



In our ever expanding and complicated commercial system, state 

 lines are being rapidly erased. A single state is too small a unit to 

 prevent traffic in staple commodities. The facilities at the disposal 

 of most state quarantine officers are entirely inadequate when matched 

 against commercial interests affected by quarantine measures. It is, 

 therefore, important that the various states which are threatened by 

 invasion of insect pests or plant diseases get together and close up the 

 avenues of invasion as tightly as possible — a task which one state can 

 hardly accomplish. Too many of our state quarantines are a delusion 

 and a serious reflection on the general principle of pest dispersion. 



The quarantines established against the state of Utah by the states 

 of Arizona, California, Idaho,^ Montana and Oregon on account of the 

 alfalfa weevil which infests this state have given the writer an oppor- 

 tunity of observing the practical operation and effectiveness of state 

 quarantines. In the light of scientific investigations which have been 

 made, relative to the spread of the alfalfa weevil, not one of these 

 quarantines, as a whole, is justified, and no state is getting protection 

 from the alfalfa weevil by their establishment. We have had the 

 weevil in Utah for approximately twelve years and although the 

 infested area is being extended gradually by the insects flying and 

 crawling, there is not a single instance where a colony of weevils has 

 become established at any distance from the previously infested points. 

 If ordinary commercial traffic had been a factor in extending infesta- 



1 In fairness to the state of Idaho it should be said that their quarantine was forced 

 upon them by the authorities of California who made this one of the conditions upon 

 which part of Idaho was released from the general quarantine which originally in- 

 cluded both Idaho and Utah. 



