Pilots resume battle with gypsy moths

Pilots in New Jersey and Pennsylvania resumed the battle last week against gypsy moth caterpillars, which last year defoliated more than a million acres of trees in the two states and decimated acres of blueberry and cranberry crops.

With helicopters and fixed-wing planes, they will spray more than 300,000 acres, more than double last year's treatment area. Yet officials fear that still won't be enough to control what some predict could be the largest population of the pests since 1990.

New Jersey mayors who wanted the state to use stronger poisons were rebuffed, and they are now bracing for the worst. Based on egg-mass surveys conducted last year, the state Department of Agriculture expects the fuzzy black crawlers to kill 45,000 acres of trees this year, up from 14,000 acres last year.

After years in decline, the cyclical caterpillar population rebounded last year, stripping more than 320,000 acres of trees in New Jersey. Officials anticipate that the affected area will be twice as big this season, with Burlington and Ocean Counties hit hardest. Reinfested trees are at greater risk of dying.

In Pennsylvania - where nearly 700,000 acres were defoliated last year, including vast areas in the Poconos - forestry officials say that larvae can now be seen in the southern regions, including Chester County. It is in their first month, when they are voraciously eating, that the red-spotted caterpillars are destructive.

At the Dingletown Recreation Complex in Burlington County last week, tiny caterpillars rained from the leaves onto Shamong Mayor Jon Shevelew as he pointed to emerging caterpillars and to open eggcases, tan and putty-like, clinging to trees. Residents have wrapped the trunks with bands of double-sided tape, a remedy that stops some caterpillars from reaching the leaves.

Shamong is among 78 New Jersey towns on 94,000 acres that will be sprayed this month. In Pennsylvania, nearly 222,000 acres will be treated.

"Last year, 5,000 acres of trees in the town were defoliated," Shevelew said. "Some people have said we'll soon be called the Shamong Desert."

The township has considered raising taxes for the first time in 15 years to pay for the $180,000 spraying.

Shevelew wonders whether it's even worth it. Earlier this year, he and other South Jersey mayors and officials urged the state Department of Environmental Protection to spray the chemical pesticide Dimilin, which is stronger than the state-approved bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterial insecticide.

The Department of Agriculture, which runs the aerial program, supported use of Dimilin, which it said was more effective. Dimilin is sprayed in other states, including Maryland and Virginia.

But DEP officials denied the request, citing concerns about the chemical's effect on crustaceans and aquatic life in streams.

The mayors were also upset to learn that the department would spray their towns only once this year, though two applications had been used in past years.

Terry Brader, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said that Pennsylvania also uses bacillus thuringiensis, and can afford only one application.

"We feel one application is adequate," Brader said. He said the state prefers the insecticide because it's "very safe and time-tested."

With so much more land in jeopardy, there aren't enough aircraft available to spray twice in the short period when treatment is effective, said Carl Schulze, a director with the New Jersey agriculture department.

Spraying must be performed in May and the first week of June, once the caterpillars have reached a certain size, and when the air is dry and calm, he said.

Pemberton Township officials withdrew from the program last month, saying it would be a waste of about $243,000 in taxpayer money to treat its 2,000 at-risk acres. They felt the single application of bacillus thuringiensis would likely be insufficient.

Posted on the town Web site is a list of private pest-control companies that residents are urged to contact. Though the DEP bans aerial spraying of chemicals, it allows Dimilin and another powerful pesticide, Sevin, to be applied with high-pressure hoses from the ground. The cost to homeowners is $100 to $500, the Web site says.

Southampton Township in Burlington County, which had a high tree-kill last year, is taking a different approach. Administrator Michael McFadden said officials last month hired Cordoba Helicopter, based in Florida, to provide a second application of bacillus thuringiensis after the state sprays 2,600 acres there. The town will pay $116,000 to the state and $134,000 to Cordoba.

Schulze said neighborhood groups also had hired private companies to do aerial spraying.

Schulze said his office had been inundated by calls from residents who are seeing the caterpillars everywhere. Though the pests prefer oaks and hardwoods, they also munch on conifers, blueberry and cranberry plants, and even grass.

A blueberry farmer in Plumstead reported that 20 percent of his crop was ruined in days as caterpillars gobbled up blossoms, Schulze said.

Beyond the initial loss, he said, infestation has a far-reaching effect. There is habitat destruction and, when the trees are bare and the soil dries out, "there's an increased danger of forest fires.

"Trees also contribute 10 to 15 percent of real estate value, so the loss of trees can have an economic impact on residents," he said.

Though Schulze would have preferred a more aggressive approach, he believes that spraying bacillus thuringiensis and banding trees is better than doing nothing. "We believe this may keep some trees alive," he said.

Schulze also is praying for a nasty, damp Memorial Day weekend so that a soilborne fungus that preys on the caterpillars will multiply.

"Though it won't be great for people celebrating the holiday, that's the time we would see the largest collapse in the gypsy moth population," he said.