New Mexico: Newest in bug hysteria is the Looper

Nature has many natural processes by which a trees life is taken
away. Nature also has many processes by which a tree can protect,
renew, or replicate itself. And nature’s resilience is based on its
abundance. Problem is that when humans consume all the abundance
nature’s natural processes for tree death, nature’s natural processes
for protection from tree death… it all goes haywire! And when humans
further limit the way by which the trees are able to renew and
replicate themselves these broken cycles of life and death can quickly
turns an entire landscpae into a desert. So next time someone is
blaming bugs for killing trees please help ’em understand: that before
humans the bugs had a natural, normal helpful role and that if we
don’t make room for ’em they may end up killing our very last trees!
— Editor, Forest Policy Research
——————

Across several western states, including New Mexico, Pine bark beetles
are doing a world of damage. The Lincoln National Forest in Cloudcroft
is not so worried about devastation from beetles but another pest —
the looper.

Pine bark beetles are only about the size of a single
piece of rice, but this year they are expected to kill more than 2
million trees in Wyoming and Colorado. Trees in northern New Mexico
are threatened too. “The pine bark beetles kill the trees and they’re
killing millions of acres of lodge pole pine that are mature and over
mature. They’re taking out all the older trees and it is pretty
devastating,” said timber program manager of the Lincoln National
Forest, Terry Delay. Around the Lincoln National forest in Cloudcroft
there isn’t any pine bark beetle damage because they only affect one
species of tree. “That tree is lodge pole pine, and we don’t have that
down in southern New Mexico,” Delay said. In northern New Mexico, it’s
a different story. “You drive up through those areas and 70 to 90
percent of the trees are dead. It has long term impacts on the fire
danger and them having green forests out there,” Delay said. In
Cloudcroft though, the looper bug had done its share of damage. Now,
the loopers, or napytia janetae, are virtually undetectable.
Cloudcroft school science teachers have made students aware of the
insect and its damage. “We discussed what kind of damage they were
doing, what were some of the possible methods we were going to do to
prevent what was going on and whether or not we could recover from
it,” said sixth grade science teacher Joey Rogers. He said his
students didn’t have to go far from school to see the dead trees.
“Around the corner (from the school) there is a really good example of
it. There is massive damage,” Rogers said. When the looper was in its
caterpillar stage it ate pine needles. The damage peaked in 2007,
affecting about 30,000 acres. One area reported 5,000 acres of dead
trees, Delay said. “They ate themselves out of house and home. They
ate so many needles that we theorized that they probably starved to
death. They didn’t have enough needles to finish their life cycle to
become moths and lay additional eggs,” Delay said. The Lincoln
national forest is looking at salvage logging, and having sales just
east of Cloudcroft that they are just now advertising. In some areas,
new ponderosa pine and fir trees will be planted.
http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/18450394/detail.html

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