With last year’s active southern pine beetle outbreaks across the southeastern U.S., it is increasingly important to forecast if the “most destructive pest in the South” will again rear it’s ugly head. One of the ways to predict this is through Southern pine beetle trapping, which the N.C. Forest Service does each year. Traps have […]
The emerald ash borer put on a big show in 2015. Last year, the tree-killing beetle was found in 14 North Carolina counties, bringing the total infested counties in the state to 18. Previously, it was only known to occur in four counties along the Virginia state line. Not only were last year’s detections of the beetle […]
Southern pine beetle traps, which were set across the state this spring by N.C. Forest Service district staff and others, have given us some good news! According to the trapping results, there will likely be a low number of southern pine beetle infestations in the state this year. That is good news because the southern pine beetle […]
You may have already seen them along roadsides: 3-feet-tall purple prisms, hanging in trees. No, there’s not a child crying somewhere about his lost kite. These are traps for the emerald ash borer, an invasive tree-killing insect detected in North Carolina for the first time last year. Between 1,300 and 1,400 traps are currently being […]
The southern pine beetle is a small insect capable of causing catastrophic damages in pine forests. In the past several years, “the most destructive pest in the South” has caused an estimated $1.5 billion in damages [Forest Heath Technology Enterprise Team report 2014]. The N.C. Forest Service monitors populations of the beetle each spring to […]