You're asking for a personal opinion, but IMHO, I would dispose of them, except maybe 1 or 2 if you're interesting in raising them. Sometimes I get that crazy idea to raise a strange moth, not knowing what it will look like when it makes a cocoon and emerges. Sometimes I don't - like right now when most of the fennel is gone! LOL! If you have lots of fennel or dill to share, it's really up to you if you want to allow them to eat. If the moth you believe it is, is a small one, they probably won't eat much. Good luck and let us know how it progresses! Susan

Interesting - thanks for that. So LA is an affected area - I will check the CA forum, but I don't remember seeing a post on this. I can already tell from the male and female moth pics that I will have trouble ID'ing the LBAM on the fly. I'm also worried that I could send eggs by mail on seeds I've collected, although my city isn't listed as affected yet. I think APHIS has an impossible job on their hands and the politics around free trade exacerbate it tremendously. I dealt with them once a decade ago when Russia wanted to export spruce/pine/fir two-by-fours to the US and to get past bark beetle restrictions, the Russians were going to use spent nuclear fuel rods from their subs to irradiate each stud! APHIS was so hamstrung my the Commerce Dept, that it wasn't until a federal judge ruled that the dept. could offer sane restrictions. Whatever one thinks of free trade, the free movement of pests and pathogens in a natural consequence.

Thanks Jean I guess I just wanted to check out what was happening on the ground. I was working for a chap that was using SIT (sterile Insect Technique)to control moths. We wanted to ready for any quarantine incursion that might happen here and we were using LBAM as our target pest so we would have some idea how moths respond. It was just a bit of good luck that we have been doing some work on our native moth that is now a pest for you. The results of the trial work are not all finished yet, but it looks promising. Oregon would probably be LBAM heaven, from what I have seen here, a bit cooler and wetter than California. In one of our glasshouses set at about 25DegC the moths just cleaned up grapes, roses, olives,verbena, plums ,apples and even the weeds. I believe this moth will just about eat anything including pine needles. I doubt you will be able to quarantine this moth to California so it will be eradication or surrender. There must be some natural predators here tho because we are finding it hard to catch them in the wild. In two weeks time I am going to set light traps in an orchard that has been sprayed for fruit fly over the summer. I believe the fruit fly sprays may have killed off some predators and we may find some moths there. In my own orchard I did no spraying yet found no moths. We might get some clues as to what predates them by comparing the sprayed to non sprayed orchard.

DBD, Maybe one of the Floridians on the Butterfly Gardens Gallery will be able to id it.