Gypsy Moths

[Silencer]

Here's an example where our $$$ Funds are going on these gosh dern pests.

Pennsylvania Game Commission officials today announced the scheduled gypsy moth spraying of 42,731 acres of its more than 1.4 million acre State Game Lands (SGLs) system has been completed.  The spraying began in late April and concluded on May 28.

The Game Commission paid $1,349,993.58 out of its Growing Greener II funding to the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which oversees the Statewide Cooperative Spray Program for gypsy moths, to spray portions of 38 different SGLs. 

Are they spread across the U.S. ??   In my area they dont seem too bad this year, but in previous years they ate up all the leaves and things were bad.   Its pretty sad to see that much money being spent on a failed experiment when it could be spent better for us. 

[Carolina Coyote]

Well at least someone is trying to do something to control the moths, we have a Fire Ant  problem in the South and no sign of any tax dollers being spent to help that problem and they get worse every year. cc

[Ladobe]

Silencer - A few comments on the long term effects of GM's might help you see this a little differently.   My intent, not to criticise your comments pard, but I have some experience with this bug and the fight to control it.

Yes they are spreading, and have been ever since introduced to North America in the mid 1800's.   They spread naturally fairly slowly across the country, but get their biggest surge into new areas with the involuntary help of man.   The latter is how they leaped from New England and the east coast over the Midwest (plains) to now infest much of the west.   As for it being a "failed experiment", you might call it that if the million's of acres of deforestation a year in this country is not important to you, the loss in cash crops or all the other species of both plants and animals affected by the loss of habitat they cause.   Or if the disease and the resulting increase of wild fire potential when both of these spread the effects well beyond the areas infected with GM's does not matter.   

For five years starting in 1988 (as a local Lepidopterist) I was involved with the battle against GM's when they "bloomed" in Utah.   The UDOA employed three timed doses of bacterial pesticide via aerial spraying each spring to large tracts found to be infected with GM's.   The Bacillus bacteria that was used is target specific, IOW, it only targets lepidopteran larva (caterpillars), and is effective in reducing numbers and so helps keep them from spreading as fast.   But the spraying doesn't get them all and has to be done continually once an area is infected with GM's, with the hope that after years and years it might have a chance to completely eradicate them.   The spraying program also kills all other species of lepidopteran larva - and that's where I and other selected members of the state lepidopteran society came in.    Our involvement was to go on TV and educate the public, to help set and monitor GM traps to identify hot spots, set pheromone traps to reduce the breeding of GM's and in the weeks just prior to the 6 week spraying program each spring to pre collect livestock of all other lepidopteran species in those areas to be sprayed that would be in their early instar larval stage at the time of spraying and so would be killed by it.    The livestock was then home reared by us until after the spraying was done that spring and used to reseed all those species back into their now sterile areas.

So while I totally agree our government wastes trillions of dollars each year on worthless causes, as a person who loved to hunt and fish and enjoy the beauty of our country all his life I don't consider the small number of dollars spent in trying to control GM's and all the collateral damage they cause as being money wasted by them.

L.

[Silencer]

No probs, but I think I came off the wrong way in my typing.   

What I meant is they shouldn't have gotten here in the first place since they were an experiment and we wouldn't have to be spending the funds fighting them.  They devastated this part of the east the last few years and finally are getting under control. 

I understand and agree, and learned a little more about the critters from your post.

[FinsnFur]

I gotta go look up gypsy moths now so I know what the heck everyone's talking about 

[alscalls]

They have killed off a heck of a lot of my trees in the last two years I have lost count. Every year some unknown fella hangs up some little green boxes and on the second trip he removes them. I never saw one in the darn things so I do not know what good it is doing. Right now I am thinking I should sell the place while it still has trees on it.
I wish I knew what I could do to save some trees but it is a bigger problem than I can handle.

[Silencer]

As for it being a "failed experiment",

Like the tale of the sorcerer's apprentice, the gypsy moth is an example of an experiment gone horribly wrong. The moth was brought to the United States in 1869 in a failed attempt to start a silkworm industry. Escaping soon after, the gypsy moth has become, over the past century, a major pest in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.

Thats what I was meaning but after re-reading it I can see where it shifted elsewheres