Moth infestation in northern N.B. likely spruce budworm

The milllions of mothsthat have beencarpeting parking lots, cars and even people in the Campbellton-Dalhousie area over the past couple of days are likelyrelated to the dreadedspruce budworm.

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Rob Johns, an insect ecologist with Natural Resources Canada, says the influx seems to bea migration of spruce budwormmoths and is likelydue the current weather conditions.

"These naturally warm weather conditions tend to cause updrafts, which allow the moths to be pulledupinto the atmosphere and they can be carriedhundredsof kilometres away."

Johns says this mass migration is likely coming down from the BaieComeau area of Quebec, which is experiencing a spruce budworm outbreak.

There are so many moths in the air they can be seen on radar on the Environment Canada weather site,Johns says.

"You can actually see the radar imagery of these big plumes on non-precipitation nights, big plumes of something moving down from the north."

Massive defoliation

Spruce budwormcaused massive defoliation in the province in the 1970s and '80s, and although it has been on a downward trend since then, over the past few years scientists have begun warning of another seriousoutbreak.

Johns says there is an outbreak happening right now in the province, covering about six million hectares of land, especially in the northeast, but so far it's onlya low-density population of insects.

However,these swarms of moths are not necessarily a sign of an escalation in the problem.

"As many as 70 or 80 per cent of these can be male moths, which of course are not carrying eggs," said Johns.

"Right now my crew's up there digging through the thousands and millions of them that are basically sitting over the parking lots in the area."

He says his group is looking at these hotspots to prevent the budwormfrom spreading to other areas, " not unlike how you might treat the leading edge of a forest fire."

'Wise to be vigilant'

These kinds ofmass events are not unprecedented, says Johns, and while they don't necessarily lead to a major budworm outbreak "it's wise to be vigilant."

He is urgingthe publicto check their fir and spruce trees forsignsof redness or defoliation or to get involved by collecting any moths they see;bagging, datingand freezing them and arranging for pickup.

"We have people trapping for us using pheromone traps. We've had reports of them fromas far down as Saint Johnand Shediac."

Johns suggests anyone interested in getting involved should go tobudwormtracker.ca for more information.