Tales of the Trails

Photo by Ben Swapp. Top: Showing trees "spotted" which will be cut and peeled so as to expose the larvae to the light which kills them. Bottom: The Greenland Point "Bug Camp" in the Grand Canyon .National Park. TALES OF THE TRAILS 3. A Bug Story By Joe Hickman This is a true story about bugs that are destroying millions of dollars' worth of your property each year. I learned these facts in the Grand Canyon National Park last summer, when I followed a trail that led to a "bug camp," out on Greenland Point. We stopped at the Park Ranger station and inquired if Ranger Ben Swapp had been seen going by that way. "Yes," answered Winess, the Park ranger, "Ben went up the trail yonder about an hour ago, on his way to the bug cainp." "Bug camp?" "Yep," went on Winess, "din't you know we maintained camps here for bugs?" We all laughed, being under the impression that this

664 IMPROVEMENT ERA was doubtless a term that the rangers had adapted to their use for the purpose of designating a certain class of tourists. It struck me as very fitting, and I wondered if he thought of directing our party that way; so, inquired farther. "What are your special requirements for admission to a bug camp? Do you think we would make suitable additions?" Winess will joke with you as long as you are game, and he does not draw the line on strangers. Having met him a few days previous, we were, in terms of the trails, old acquaintances. Seeing the interpretation we had placed on the term, he continued, "I am not sure you fellows could secure permanent membership in one of those camps. You see you have either to know considerable about bugs or else you have to be able to swing an ax for about ten hours a day." Not wishing to push the matter to a test in either of these respects, we dropped the subject of admission and inquired relative to the definition of the term. Bug camps, we learned, are the camps maintained by the U. S. Bureau of Entomology for the men who are working on the problem of insect control. The Greenland Point camp, which was one of the three camps being maintained at the time of our visit, is an example of them all. It consisted of the tents of about sixty laborers, also a large cook-tent and dining room, near which were the tents of the directors of the experiment. I call the venture an experiment for, although it has cost the Government hundreds of thousands of dollars in money expended and timber destroyed, it still remains a question what the results will be from the standpoint of conservation. We spent some time at the camp, learning that the work was being pursued for the purpose of controling, if not exterminating, the Black Hills beetle. This beetle causes the death anaually of millions of dollars worth of timber on the Kaibab forest and in the Grand Canyon National Park. Doubtless it is doing its deadly work on many of our other forests, and if the methods being tried out in Arizona prove successful they will probably be followed on other timebered areas. Let us note here, for the sake of our more technical readers, that a beetle is not a bug and in this respect the term used on the forest is a misnomer. However, the term is well fixed in the local phraseology and will be used in this article with this under- standing. Some idea of the seriousness of the situation may be gained from noting the fact that the timber cut and peeled by the "bug men," in their efforts last summer alone, if valued at $25. per thousand board feet, would be a loss of a quarter of a million dollars. In noting this fact, let us consider further that the timber cut and peeled is very insignificant when one compares it with the hundreds of acres of standing dead timber that he sees in the region, — dead because of the work of the beetle. If a "fire bug" caused a fire that destroyed a million dollars worth of our property we would flash the news in red headlines across the nation. Yet here is an army of more fear-

TALES OF THE TRAILS 665 ful "bugs" that are causing annual losses of more than this amount and many of us know little, if anything, of his activities. To further impress the vastness of the venture being made by our Bureau of Entomology in control of the beetle let us quote the fol- lowing from figures Ben Swapp has given me in his summary of the work of the past year: "The method of control being tried is that of cutting down the in- fested trees and peeling the bark, thus exposing the beetle while in its larvae stage. Being thus exposed the larvae die and the spread of the beetle is thus checked. The bark peeled from trees the past summer would weigh approximately 10,452,000 pounds. If spread out it would cover 96 acres. If loaded in cars of 1 8 tons each it would take about ten trains to move it. If spread out two feet wide it would be enough to make a walk from one end of the state of Utah to the other. The cost to the Bureau of peeling this bark was $31,902.08." While there are numerous species of beetles in our forests, all are not destructive to the trees. Some kinds are even beneficial, in that they are parasitic in nature, feeding upon the harmful Black Hills type. This beetle attacks the trees in pairs. The female enters the tree by boring through the bark and then begins to excavate her galleries. The male remains at the bottom for some time, keeping the opening at the end of the gallery open so that the pitch will flow out. When he fails at his job, as he sometimes does, the pitch banks up and drowns the female. At intervals the female side steps and bores a chamber in the side of the gallery. In these chambers she deposits her eggs. The male now follows her in the gallery, packing sawdust around the eggs, and boring air holes through to the surface of the tree. As this is the only beetle that packs its eggs in sawdust, one may determine what kind of beetle is at work in any particular tree by noting how the eggs are packed. Many harmless kinds of beetles use the chambers made by the Black Hills beetle after this beetle has deserted it. These harmless types reproduce in the dead trees, while the Black Hills always attacks a green tree. It is the deadly work of the larvae of the beetle that costs us the enormous sums given above. When the eggs hatch the larvae crawl out of the sawdust beds and begin feeding upon the cambium layer of the tree. The adults have worked their chambers parallel to the heights of the tree, but the larvae work in a horizontal direction and thus soon girdle the tree. This, of course, causes the tree to die, as it is in the cambium layer that the growth is produced by the upward flow of the sap. It is the object of the work of the Bureau of Entomology to map the areas affected and then to "spot" the particular trees that harbor the larvae. These trees are then cut down and peeled as explained above. This spotting requires expert entomologists who learn by close study of the habits of the insects how to determine a "good" tree. This term is applied to trees that harbor large numbers of larvae, and the peeling of which will do much toward controling the ravages of the next generation.