Looking more like the set of a science fiction movie than a north shore New Brunswick community, the Campbellton-Dalhousie area was invaded by millions of spruce budworm moths over the weekend.
Businesses in both towns were forced to hired vacuum trucks to to clear piles of moths from parking lots and streets after the insects fell to the ground and died.
Forestry officials are hoping the swarms stay out of Maine.
For one small region of northern New Brunswick, conditions combined to create a sort of perfect storm for millions spruce budworm moths to blanket the area. Even insect experts such as state entomologist Dave Struble were stunned by the size of the swarm that was actually picked up as a moving cloud on radar by Canadian weather stations.
“We got just the right weather conditions and there was no lack of moths, so they got lifted on the weather and they were moved with the weather front and at least some of them settled out in that Dalhousie-Campbellton area,” Struble says.
Forty years ago, Maine’s forests were devastated by a cyclical spruce budworm infestation that destroyed 25 million cords of white spruce and balsam fir trees. Struble, who monitors the budworm population for the Maine Forest Service, says Maine has likely missed swarms of the moths thus far due to prevailing wind patterns in the region, but he says Maine continues to take steps to address the potential damage of a predicted outbreak, possibly as soon as next year.
“We can be looking at reducing the primary host for budworm, which is balsam fir and white spruce, and if we get that proportion down, even though we’re still susceptible to a moth flight and population build up, our vulnerability drops off,” Struble says. “The big problem right now is markets. So many of these plans were developed starting two years ago, the market conditions have changed some in that period.”
Struble said currently, the demand for white spruce and balsam fir remains weak with the decline of the state’s papermaking industry.