(Continued from Page 1)

(Continued from Page 1)

“You don’t know how bad it is until they hit at your door,” said Hubert Gilkey, chairman of the Board of Supervisors and the board’s representative on the gypsy moth committee.

They’ve hit Gene Tucker’s door. Mr. Tucker, who lives on Fodderstack Road and was one of a handful of people who attended the informational session, told of his confrontation with the moth in West Virginia. He visited property he owns there to find “not a leaf on top of the mountain.” Inside his mountain top cabin, he thought he heard hail falling on the roof. It wasn’t hail; it was thousands upon thousands of gypsy moth caterpillars dropping down from the trees. “They rolled into the gutters and tore the gutters off!”

The infestation was so severe and the defoliation so complete that the trees - oaks and other hardwoods - died, “every one of them,” Mr. Tucker said.

Mr. Tucker’s experience may be extreme. According to forestry consultant Lyt Wood, also a member of the county’s moth committee, softwoods die after a single defoliation but most hardwoods generally can withstand one and even two attacks by the caterpillars. He hesitated, however, at giving absolute assurances. “My concern is 50 acres of timber (defoliated this year by the caterpillars),” said B. Jenkins. “Is this going to kill the timber?.”

“It might and it might not,” Mr. Wood replied. “If a tree is defoliated three years in a row, it’s going to die. If it’s defoliated once, a chestnut oak, hickory or white oak, if it’s a healthy tree, the chances are that it will survive.” He stressed the impossibility of making accurate predictions without data on level of moth infesttation and condition of the trees.

Trees under stress from some other source, as well as rapidly growing species in good soils, are the most susceptible and the most likely to die from gypsy moth damage, Mr. Wood said. As an example, he pointed to Mt. Marshall, which has been seriously defoliated this year. “If the moths come back next year and completely defoliate the trees again, chances are a lot will die.”

Moth is “naturalized citizen"

The moth is now a part of the fauna here. It became settled in this country in 1869, after specimens invported for experiments in silk production escaped from a laboratory in Massachusetts. Without the natural predators that keep its populations in check in Europe and Asia, the pest proliferated. Well established in the six New England states, it has more recently extended its range northward and westward.

While the male moths, which can fly, have been in Rappahannock for years, the females, which do not fly and must “hitch-hike” rides on vehicles, are more recent arrivals. With the female’s appearance, the problem starts multiplying.

“But it’s a people problem more than an environmental problem,” emphasized Mrs. Thornhill. “People just can’t stand the first couple of years.” The nuisance and foliage damage factors are most severe while the moth is climbing to its population peak; when that peak is reached, a natural virus carried by the moths breaks out, killing off the pest. “Their numbers will build back up in five to seven years, but never to the levels of the first (infestation),” Mrs. Thornhill said.

Eradication is impossible

With various control programs, “we’re talking about suppression, not eradication,” Mr. Wood said. “Eradication is impossible . . . The gypsy moth is here now and as far as we know, it will always be.”

But when the population irrupts in a swift and violent invasion of the insect pests, people demand something be done. Usually that “something” is spraying, with either a biological or chemical insecticide.