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[at-l] Wooly adelgids & hemlock health along the AT
At 03:36 PM 1/22/2005 -0500, David Hicks wrote:
>BTW2 -- This past summer I met the volunteer who releases the $1.00 a beetle
>in the Park. He said that $10,000.00 worth of them would fill a 50g Altoids
>tin. He said that the reason they are so dear is that so far the biologist
>have not found any alternative food source (artificial or natural) on
>which to
>raise the breeders. OIOW, they have to raise the adelgids to feed the
>beetles
>to raise the beetles to fight the adelgids. For what it is worth, he also
>said that so far they have no evidence of the beetles reproducing in the wild.
This reminds me of an infestation of tent caterpillars that was back in the
'50s. We were burning their nests but they were reproducing faster than
they could be destroyed that way. They, meaning whomever was in charge of
such things (I was in grade school), released flies that fed on the
caterpillars. I don't remember the details but we were told not to swat the
flies. They were harmless to humans. Once the caterpillars were gone the
flies died of starvation and that was the end of the infestation.