Word: budworms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Strong supporting evidence came from U.S. Forest Service records, which showed that there were in fact several severe spruce budworm infestations in forests near Roosevelt just before the UFO outbreaks. Thus, the budworm moths, having feasted on the trees and flying in well-defined swarms that may have measured miles across, could have been on nocturnal migrations when the people of Roosevelt began seeing those strange, dancing lights. Indeed, as the moths hovered and blinked overhead, while trying to escape atmospheric electric fields on certain stormy nights, they might well have resembled what the scientists call a great "free-floating...
...sometimes killing livestock with its fiery sting and driving farm workers from the fields. Some experts believe that it will continue to press forward, adapting to cooler temperatures and inexorably moving toward both the North and the West. In forest areas, the gypsy moth, the tussock moth, the spruce budworm and the southern pine beetle are wreaking devastation on huge areas of woodland, defoliating and killing millions of valuable trees and destroying in 1975 alone enough board feet of timber to build 910,000 houses...
Descending Clouds. Though the budworm infestation has been a fact of Maine's forest life for years, it grew to epidemic proportions last July after the caterpillars became moths. In addition to Maine's native budworms, hordes more were swept southeast on prevailing winds from Canada, where 75 million acres are also infested. "Clouds" of the insects-one measured 64 miles long by 16 miles wide-were tracked by the U.S. Weather Service's radar operators. When the moths landed, they clogged factory ventilators and auto radiators; their crushed bodies coated highways with a slippery, accident-causing...
...products industry. Workers and businesses serving the timber industry could lose another $106 million per year. Beyond that, Maine's $450 million-a-year tourist industry will suffer; no campers or hunters will want to go into a gloomy wasteland of dead trees. In the competition with the budworm, concludes Lester De-Coster, New England regional manager of the American Forest Institute, "man cannot afford to lose...
Trouble is, man's prospects for winning are not very bright. Ever since the use of DDT was banned in 1967, Maine has had few weapons in its battle against the budworm. Environmentalists have suggested gradually cutting down the spruce and balsam trees to deny the caterpillar its food and replacing them with hardwood varieties immune to attack. But that plan is not practical; spruce and balsam are best adapted to the north woods and, says Fred Holt, director of Maine's bureau of forestry, "they always come back when you plant something else." Biological controls-most notably...