Leaving an infested pine in place only gives the beetles a platform for staging their attack on nearby healthy trees and can lead to the deforestation of surrounding acreage. Had Gainesville delayed in removing infested trees, Meeker said it would have been "very, very costly."
"During outbreaks, the Southern Pine Beetle is going to run the show and will overwhelm all the pines in its path, including the more resistant slash and longleaf pines," Meeker said. "It will not stop until it runs out of pines."
Trees successfully colonized by the beetles cannot survive, regardless of control measures, like pesticides. The beetles also carry and introduce into trees the deadly blue stain fungi. Under normal conditions, the beetles dine only on stressed or damaged pines, but during outbreaks they attack healthy trees. Females may live a month and lay 160 eggs, allowing infestations to spread at a rate of up to 50 feet a day under the worst conditions, Meeker said.
Florida has been laying the foundation for a pine beetle attack over the last few decades, with planted acreage of loblolly pine twice what it was 30 years ago and at a higher level than in 1949, when Florida's first forest inventory was conducted, Foltz and Meeker said. That means plenty of food for the beetle, which is partial to the taste of loblolly, and more frequent, widespread and destructive outbreaks for forest managers.
"We will probably see more and more outbreaks in the years ahead," Foltz said. "But this is a manageable pest, if everybody works on it together. Across Florida, people need to keep an eye out for this beetle and understand the need to act quickly."
Foltz points to an example in Texas, in which 9,000 acres of a 10,000-acre
recreation area was stripped of its pines over a two-year period because of
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Contact: John L. Foltz
FOLTZ@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu
352-392-1901
University of Florida
3-Jul-1996