Bug-Buster Helps Make County a Safer Place to Put Down Roots

J. Nicholas Nisson’s job doesn’t bug him. His job is bugs.

As the only entomologist employed by the county agriculture commissioner’s office, Nisson helps to detect insects that hitchhike on goods brought into the county from other states and countries and threaten crops.

I “wouldn’t trade it for anything,” said Nisson, whose constant task is to preserve crops worth millions of dollars.

One of the nastiest and most dangerous critters Nisson has helped to battle is a little brown beetle from Australia named the eucalyptus longhorn borer. First discovered in the United States in 1984 at an El Toro eucalyptus grove, the inch-long beetle has killed thousands of eucalyptus trees since then.

By the time of its discovery, the beetle already was established in the county and probably had been for several years, Nisson said. It was too late to eradicate them, and the county’s efforts then--as now--were limited to controlling or reducing their population, he said.

The beetle is now part of the county’s insect fauna and continues to affect eucalyptus trees that are old or weak, Nisson said.

“Those types of insects are exotic pests. . . . They are the weeds of the insect world,” he said.

But Nisson, 32, doesn’t want to perpetuate any prejudices against bugs in general.

“The truth is that the vast majority of insects are not considered pests,” he said. “They’re just another form of animal life.

“Just because you see a bee fly in the yard, doesn’t mean you have to get upset,” he said. “Most insects you can live and get along with just fine.”

Even his wife “is becoming more and more tolerant” of insects. “I have enlightened her,” he says jokingly.

“Many people are ignorant of the insects in their back yard, and that is unfortunate,” Nisson said. He also bemoans the fact that most people view bugs “as nothing more than insects and something repulsive to them.”

Nisson said his interest in insects began when he was a child and his parents owned an orange orchard in Tustin. He studied biology at Cal State Fullerton, receiving undergraduate and master’s degrees.

The fun of entomology, he said, is that the scientist is always discovering.

“Over the years, (insects) have been a frontier in biology,” he said. “There are so many of them that, as an entomologist, I will never see it all. There will always be something new.”

People columnist Herbert J. Vida is on vacation.