Spruce Bud Worm

[fesulfcraw]

Trees that are dead and dying are a real fire hazard ! The woods looks real nasty with all the needle less trees. I thought the Army worms were bad but at least leaf trees will releaf but not so with ever greens.

[Jeff]

We are having issues with them in the eastern u.p. of Michigan 

[sawguy21]

They devastated our forests in the 80's, the dead trees provided fuel for massive fires. >:( I am amazed at how one huge clear cut has come back, they were hauling 300 loads a day out to slow the spread and try to salvage as much timber as possible. Conditions are ripe for another infestation, we need a real cold snap in October to kill the larvae and it isn't happening.

[NS_HuntNFarm]

I spent the summer doing spruce budworm monitoring/trapping/branch sampling in Newfoundland. It's on the rise again here but this province has been plagued by insect issues over the years. Notably spruce budworm and hemlock looper. This recent infestation blew over from Quebec so there also has to be other areas that are becoming a mess in eastern Canada. The province has been spraying but there is a large national park which has decided they want to leave things natural and its harbouring a lot of insects and causing a headache. The biologic spray program took place over 140000HA or about 345000 acres. Insect infestations often coincide with large forest fires we will see the future outcomes. Is the forest service stepping in and spraying for you folks to the south? 

[Southside]

I recall the end of the last round in the 80s and the forestry practices that came about as a result, this was back in Maine.  History repeats itself.  

[SwampDonkey]

Here in New Brunswick, the vulnerable stands were old fir. They were in decline and the bugs know this. We don't have much of that old fir anymore. By the early 90's and for almost 30 years we never had to deal with the budworm. This round they'll hit that thick suppressed fir that again isn't good sawlog wood, because it's half rotten. It's usually in the pulp pile. Healthy young fir that is managed isn't at high risk. I'm not seeing any budworm around here, but I know the Irvings have sprayed some woodlands over that last 5 years or so. They will definitely hit the old white spruce in the back yard, although most of the old ones are gone anyway. Yet in the last wave, there were some white spruce as big as pine and tall that they never hit. They've all been cut in the last 20-30 years anyway.

[peakbagger]

Maine had the budworm in the 1970s all over, this was all second growth managed spruce/fir of equal age. The state applied copious amounts of aerial chemicals to control them but it just delayed things a bit. The pulp mills couldnt cut the wood fast enough. The state has decided that they are not going to fight the next round with chemicals. 

[SwampDonkey]

You say managed of equal age. Most of it had no stand improvement/spacing. It was likely old fir growing too thick and less vigourous. We run spacing crews up here, probably started in the late 60's. And even that has some variability because not the best sites were always targeted. There's a lot of junk fir out there that had an overstory removed, then thinned. The fir could be 40 years old before it actually started growing after the overstory was removed. It's still junk fir. Short growth, dry bark and rot in the centre. Prime stuff for budworms.

Other target areas are riperian areas and deer wintering areas being left untouched, just ripe for the picking by budworms.

We never lost our healthy fir here on the woodlots, back about '90 we cut 16-20" diameter fir for logs off the woodlot. But our fir were not pure stands either. The fir that survived the last budworm in the 80's on the Christmas mountains, all blew down in Nov '95. There was a massive recovery effort, the likes that had never been undertaken. When it was over the wood supply could not sustain the mills at Miramachi, the last pulp mill closed it's doors by 2005.

As far as I know they spray BT in NB for budworm.