Tree lovers were left reeling last year when the state suffered its worst gypsy moth infestation in 12 years, but Maryland and Montgomery officials fear that this spring’s crop of chomp-crazy caterpillars could cause even more devastation.
Beginning this week, nearly 100,000 acres across the state will be aerially sprayed with insecticides, double the area treated last year, according to Sue duPont, a Maryland Department of Agriculture spokeswoman.
Montgomery County is nearly tripling its spraying area from 445 acres to 1,205, a 170 percent increase, duPont said.
Some of the areas to be sprayed include Boyds, Clarksburg, Damascus, Derwood, Dickerson, Olney, Silver Spring and Takoma Park.
Funding to fight the invasive insect has also increased. Maryland amassed $4.1 million this year from federal, state and local sources, up from $2.7 million in 2007. A gypsy moth taskforce was also created last week by state lawmakers.
‘‘We haven’t seen a year this bad since 1995,” duPont said last week. More than 93,000 acres were defoliated that year, according to the state Department of Natural Resources Web site. How much occurs this year will depend on the weather and the size of the gypsy moth population, according to Mary Ellen Setting, assistant secretary of plant industries and pest management at MDA.
The gypsy moth, frequently confused with the relatively benign tent caterpillar, is the most destructive pest of forest and shade trees in the state and has defoliated more than 1 million acres since 1980, according to MDA. About 68,460 acres statewide were defoliated last year with the worst damage in western Maryland, duPont said, and 46 were defoliated in Montgomery. Most of the defoliation – 63,754 acres – occurred on land that had not been treated.
Gypsy moth populations tend to occur in cycles, building up and leveling off over the course of several years, but two consecutive dry springs and a light spraying schedule in the preceding three years contributed to this year’s entomological explosion.
‘‘If you have a high population the year before and you’re not able to knock them down, they reproduce,” Setting said, adding that last year’s hot spots were areas that had not been treated.
At Sugarloaf Mountain, an indicator area for the rest of the state, park staff counted more than 10,000 gypsy moth egg masses per acre last fall, according to Park Manager Russell Thompson.
Sugarloaf’s dominant tree species are red and white oaks, favorite foods of the caterpillars, and 83 of the park’s 3,300 acres were defoliated last year.
‘‘We’re trying to be optimistic, but a lot of those trees are probably dead,” Thompson said.
The state will spray 1,700 acres on Sugarloaf, which straddles Montgomery and Frederick counties, Thompson said. Stronghold Inc., the mountain’s nonprofit owner, is paying $6,000 to treat 300 more acres.
State officials expect diminishing funding from the federal government as it turns its attention to stopping the invasive insect, which was accidentally introduced to North America around 1868, from spreading to the Midwest, Setting said. Funding has also been a problem at the state level, MDA officials have said.
Washington Grove, which is surrounded by forest, saw about 30 percent of its trees defoliated in 2007, according to Town Councilwoman Georgette Cole. Washington Grove is on the state’s spray schedule but may pay for additional treatments.
‘‘They’ve already started to hatch,” Cole said last week. ‘‘I’ve had residents call and say the little larvae are already dropping.”
The state sprayed roughly 1.7 million acres between 1980 and 2004 with an average effectiveness rate of 98 percent, but treatment has been less intense since then. In 2004, 660 acres were sprayed in Anne Arundel and Cecil counties, and none were treated the following year, according to MDA’s Web site. There was no defoliation those two years. About 25,500 acres were sprayed in eight counties in 2006, though Montgomery was not included.
‘‘A lot of that is just hard to predict,” Setting said. ‘‘...We’ve got it here, and we’ll probably always have it unless we come up with some other solution.”
spraying schedule
Montgomery County and the Maryland Department of Agriculture expect to begin spraying for gypsy moths beginning tomorrow, weather permitting. To see if and when your neighborhood will be sprayed, visitwww.montgomerycountymd.gov⁄content⁄dep⁄Forest⁄gypsymoths.asp.
