Post by jshuey on Sept 16, 2013 5:50:40 GMT -8
I don't think that anyone is trying to protect forest from gypsy moth on a grand scale anymore. Here in Indiana, they try and eradicate isolated populations that jump out in front of the advancing front - but only if they are "big jumps". And they use the pheromone to disrupt mating and gyp-check - the very specific virus to control these to minimize non-target impacts. These are pretty expensive - so it's a pretty big deal for them to use these.
The biggest control efforts across the country are at the urban - rural interface. The moth is a nuisance to people, and that's where the Bt and harsher products get used. I heard once that in the east, they treat strips of forest along the interstate highways and other major roads, so that people don't see the defoliation.
As an aside here are three interesting things worth noting.
1- Foresters see things differently from you and I (especially old foresters). Trees are financial resources worth protecting (just like your bank account). Hence, they have no problem unleashing parasitoids and pathogens that kill many other species (or even spraying entire forests with dimilin to simply kill everything) as long as the resource that matters is protected. Younger foresters are a bity better, but until universities start instilling a sense of value to ecosystem services, trees will always have a high value compared to that "nature stuff".
2 - USDA has a terrible legacy of introducing nasty species to the US. Be it "magic beans" - aka kudzu, to eight-spotted lady bugs, or generalist lep parasitoids. All in the name of protecting some economic resource they value, at the expense of something they don't care about. This is getting better, and ironically, the same laws that started this thread are there to protect us against the government as well. Even professionals have to comply, which makes it harder to purposefully unleash the next surprise on the continent. They are getting much better about this in most of their work, but the Plant materials centers in the Midwest are still in the 1950's in this regard.
3 - those wonderful eastern US larval guides that Dave Wagner has been producing all got their start with gypsy moth research. Back in the 80's John Peacock was charged with researching non-target impacts of Bt and other treatments. He worked with Wagner's lab (and others), to rear out cats from treated and untreated forests. This was industrial scale rearing, where they would used a lift to go into the canopy, carefully cut off limbs of trees, take them back to the lab, and rear every cat they found. John retired, but Wagner kept it up and rears pretty much any cat that comes his way now. The original guides that were published by the Forest Service were distributed for free (a legacy of the research).
Shuey
The biggest control efforts across the country are at the urban - rural interface. The moth is a nuisance to people, and that's where the Bt and harsher products get used. I heard once that in the east, they treat strips of forest along the interstate highways and other major roads, so that people don't see the defoliation.
As an aside here are three interesting things worth noting.
1- Foresters see things differently from you and I (especially old foresters). Trees are financial resources worth protecting (just like your bank account). Hence, they have no problem unleashing parasitoids and pathogens that kill many other species (or even spraying entire forests with dimilin to simply kill everything) as long as the resource that matters is protected. Younger foresters are a bity better, but until universities start instilling a sense of value to ecosystem services, trees will always have a high value compared to that "nature stuff".
2 - USDA has a terrible legacy of introducing nasty species to the US. Be it "magic beans" - aka kudzu, to eight-spotted lady bugs, or generalist lep parasitoids. All in the name of protecting some economic resource they value, at the expense of something they don't care about. This is getting better, and ironically, the same laws that started this thread are there to protect us against the government as well. Even professionals have to comply, which makes it harder to purposefully unleash the next surprise on the continent. They are getting much better about this in most of their work, but the Plant materials centers in the Midwest are still in the 1950's in this regard.
3 - those wonderful eastern US larval guides that Dave Wagner has been producing all got their start with gypsy moth research. Back in the 80's John Peacock was charged with researching non-target impacts of Bt and other treatments. He worked with Wagner's lab (and others), to rear out cats from treated and untreated forests. This was industrial scale rearing, where they would used a lift to go into the canopy, carefully cut off limbs of trees, take them back to the lab, and rear every cat they found. John retired, but Wagner kept it up and rears pretty much any cat that comes his way now. The original guides that were published by the Forest Service were distributed for free (a legacy of the research).
Shuey
