Gypsy Moth Caterpillars Are Eating Everything Here On My Mountain

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I have been very busy cutting hay and fighting a mass attack of gypsy moths. These voracious insects are destroying everything here and they are out of control thanks to global warming which meant we barely had a winter which kills the stupid buggers. This is a disaster for me. Not to mention my poor forest.

Gypsy moth larvae prefer hardwoods, but may feed on several hundred different species of trees and shrubs. In the East the gypsy moth prefers oaks, apple, sweetgum, speckled alder, basswood, gray and white birch, poplar, willow, and hawthorn, although other species are also affected. The list of hosts will undoubtedly expand as the insect spreads south and west.

Older larvae feed on several species of hardwood that younger larvae avoid, including cottonwood, hemlock, southern white cedar, and the pines and spruces native to the East. During periods when gypsy moth populations are dense, larvae feed on almost all vegetation: To date, the gypsy moth has avoided ash, yellow-poplar, sycamore, butternut, black walnut, catalpa, flowering dogwood, balsam fir, red cedar, American holly, and shrubs such as mountain laurel, rhododendron, and arborvitae.

My forest was looking so lovely this spring. The cherry trees blossomed beautifully, the wild apples scented the forests with a sweet aroma, my bees have been most happy, buzzing about. Then I saw the nests of the gypsy moths. They are white tents built in the crotch of the trees. They live inside this tent, zillions of them. Then one fine day, they come crawling out and eat every single leaf off of the host tree.

Then they turn their attention to the rest of the planet. They are very similar to some humans. Like logging companies that strip everything from a forest leaving barely a twig or like mall developers paving over paradise so people can go shopping mindlessly for junk that will be cast back into the environment as garbage, so these little bugs match us equally relentless, equally destructive.

Of course, these pests are harbingers of climatic change. Plants and animals don't just die gracefully with a sigh, they lose battles with other organisms as the enviroment makes life impossible for some species.

My forest used to have gigantic chestnut trees. My husband and I sawed up the trunk of one dead tree, it was five feet in diameter at the base! Not radiius, diameter. We still have equally big giant oaks but these insect assaults are taking a toll on top of the acid rain and the many ozone alert days in summer as the sun brutally beats down on us all and the trees struggle in vain to clean the air and put precious oxygen back into the environment.
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Natural enemies play an important role during periods when gypsy moth populations are sparse. Natural enemies include parasitic and predatory insects such as wasps, flies, ground beetles, and ants; many species of spider; several species of birds such as chickadees, bluejays, nuthatches, towhees, and robins; and approximately 15 species of common woodland mammals, such as the white-footed mouse, shrews, chipmunks, squirrels, and raccoons.

I have many blue jays and chickadees. But the chickadees move north in summer because it is to ***king warm for them. If any creature can stop an invasion, it is the mighty chickadee! The ruby throated hummingbird that drinks the nectar from my flowers does nothing about these bugs.

This is why "balance of nature" is good for humans. We have dangerously unbalanced it and now we are paying the price as we lose valuable forests and farmlands to pests we bring in from exotic or distant places as well as our own predations.

Time to go outside and squish a zillion nasty caterpillars.

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