Word: budworms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is a biological time bomb in Maine's north woods armed with a fuse set to explode it in a month. Awakened by the warming sun, billions of tiny spruce-budworm larvae will hatch and turn into ravenous caterpillars, ready to eat all the needles and buds on spruce and balsam fir, hemlock and tamarack. Before their appetite is sated, the budworms are expected to chew their way through some 6 million acres of conifers. For 3.5 million of those acres-an area larger than Connecticut-this will be the third straight year of defoliation, and even healthy...
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...
...closely studied example is the effect of pesticides, which have sharply improved farm crops but also caused spectacular kills of fish and wildlife. In the Canadian province of New Brunswick, for example, the application of only one-half pound of DDT per acre of forest to control the spruce budworm has twice wiped out almost an entire year's production of young salmon in the Miramichi River. In this process, rain washes the DDT off the ground and into the plankton of lakes and streams. Fish eat the DDT-tainted plankton; the pesticide becomes concentrated in their bodies...
...harvest is only half the job. Year round company foresters roam the woods to protect the crops against disease and fire, spray insecticides to kill off such enemies as the pine beetle and the spruce budworm, which can destroy masses of trees. If fire has cleaned out all mature, seed-bearing trees, the timbermen do their own planting. In six years Crown Zellerbach seeded nearly 30,000 acres of barren land, gave away more than 1,000,000 seedlings to 4-H clubs and others for planting...
...scene was Toronto's Algonquin Park, heavily infested with budworm moths. City officials first gave the park a thorough DDT spraying by autogiro, then counted the survivors. Results: the deadly chemical killed not only the moths and other insects, but practically all invertebrates, especially crayfish; many minnows; some trout (those that ate poisoned insects); more than half of the snakes and frogs. It also damaged a few broad-leaved trees. But the census takers noted, with pleased surprise, that birds, chipmunks, mice, beaver and deer in the park were apparently unharmed...