Fun Summer 2021 Continues As Oregon & Montana Face Brunt Of Grasshopper Plague - 13 States Impacted

[hatrack]

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Prolific though they are, the grasshoppers are not interlopers. Native to the western lands, they have been there for millions of years, their populations typically in check. They hatch as tiny versions of adults, so small about 50 can fit on a coin the size of a quarter. In average years, most die off before becoming the winged grownups that now buzz the rural skies. They and their eggs are susceptible to pathogens, brutal winters and starvation while young. But grasshopper populations began ballooning in spring 2020, thanks to warmer and drier winters that favored survival, along with a lucky few rains that spur grass that feeds young grasshopper populations.

Oregon and Montana have been the hardest hit by the insatiable eaters, particularly in the arid eastern flank of both states. Thirteen other states are also facing grasshopper damage, according to hazard maps assembled by the animal and plant health inspection service at the US Department of Agriculture. The program helps contain grasshoppers on rangeland and also targets a close cousin, the Mormon cricket. The 17 states under the purview of this pest patrol have a combined agricultural value of $8.7bn, according to the most recent estimates. Last year the program spent more than $5m on suppression efforts and is presently steeped in more.

"The biggest biomass consumer in the country are not cattle, are not bison. They are grasshoppers,” said Helmuth Rogg, an entomologist and agricultural scientist who works for the Oregon department of agriculture. “They eat and eat from the day they get born until the day they die. That’s all they do.” “They basically ate all the forage,” said John O’Keeffe, a cattle rancher whose eastern Oregon ranch was besieged by grasshoppers a year ago. The ranch was recently treated with insecticide to avoid being menaced again. O’Keeffe estimates grasshoppers cost him $50,000 in lost forage, plus the price of hay to feed cattle once rangeland forage was gone.

According to Rogg, agricultural losses due to grasshoppers are often reported to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition to grazing down rangeland forage, which also wipes out feed for wild antelope, grasshoppers eat the leaves off of fruit trees and bed down in the dry areas ringing crops, where they decimate grain by eating slowly inward. Capable of flying for miles, they can travel in bands to consume one area, then move on to the next.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/04/grasshopper-swarms-us-west-drought

[msongs]

1. grasshoppers are edible - ditch the cows nt