The Healthy Forest Partnership says they’ve been able to minimize the effects of another spruce budworm outbreak, should one strike New Brunswick again.
The spruce budworm has wreaked havoc on forests in the province twice in the past — first in 1956 and again in 1975. Recently it devastated 6.3 million hectares of forest in Quebec which are situated in close proximity to northern New Brunswick.
Researchers say they believe every thirty or so years the invasive species can rear its ugly head, promoting them to create the committee several years ago.
“The approach we’re taking right now results from some recent research in Quebec that found when budworms are at really low population levels in between outbreaks it seems as though the males have a hard time finding the females so mating success is low,” said Dr. David Maclean, one of Healthy Forest Partnership’s lead scientists.
“It’s really about trying to slow down or prevent a spruce budworm outbreak from getting as big as it has in the past.”
“If we’re going through a major budworm outbreak with no attempt to intervene in it, the only option is to watch the trees die and try to salvage what you can within three to four years,” MacLean told Global News.
Through spraying and monitoring, the researchers have been able to see where hot spots develop, how successful pesticides are, and ultimately better prepare for the future.
They say even though there’s no outbreak in our province currently, there is still plenty to learn from what they’re doing.
“We’ve shifted our strategy from waiting until the outbreak is fully raging and just trying to suppress damage, towards this proactive approach where we are looking for the populations when they’re still relatively low but imminently rising, and trying to push those down,” said Rob Johns, researcher at the Atlantic Forestry Centre.
“You could compare it to another disturbance agent like forest fire for example…this is sort of an uncontrolled forest fire in the sense that it alters forest structure.”
With winter winding down, scientists are interested to see what the budworm population will look like this year and are continuing their work trying to keep the insect at bay.
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