Hungry beetles to be set loose on invasive Everglades plants

WASHINGTON — Some of the busiest workers restoring the Everglades are ugly little weevils that gobble up the leaves of invasive plants that choke much of Florida's marshland.

For more than two decades after they were released into the wild, weevils known as the Australian snout beetle have been munching the leaves of melaleuca trees to stop them from spreading seeds and turning sawgrass meadows into dense, water-sucking forests.

Now federal scientists are preparing to escalate the bug attack by rearing tens of thousands of the snout beetles over the next few years and mass-producing other useful insects after testing them at an expanded Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Davie.