Go inside the outbreak ravaging Gros Morne's forests
CBC
The caterpillar is not much to look at, as caterpillars go.
It’s small, spotted and brownish. But as it wiggles across my hand, I can’t help but think of the drive to get here, to the edge of a campground in Gros Morne National Park. Through the dips and climbs of the park’s mountainous boreal forest, much of it grey and bare in July.
All thanks to this caterpillar, and its billions of brownish friends.
“Other than fire, massive insect damage like this really changes the landscape quickly, especially when you get into these really peak outbreak cycles,” says Joe Bowden, a research scientist and entomologist with Natural Resources Canada.
The campground we're standing in together is also where he and his team first confirmed, in 2018, what they’d been expecting: the arrival of spruce budworm to Newfoundland.
This small caterpillar - which turns into an equally unremarkable looking moth - is considered the most damaging native insect to conifer trees in North America. The current outbreak began in Quebec, damaging close to 10 million hectares by 2019. From there, the moths have spread, riding the prevailing winds across the Gulf of St Lawrence to land in western Newfoundland.
It’s a natural cycle for this forest, happening every 30 to 40 years. The last outbreak began in the 1970s, consuming about 20 percent of the island’s spruce and firs. “It was quite massive in scale,” said Bowden.
In an attempt to avoid repeating that history, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador joined forces with its Maritime counterparts, the federal government, industry and research partners in a budworm control project called the Early Intervention Strategy (EIS).
This strategy aims to avoid full blown outbreaks by spraying clusters of caterpillars, with New Brunswick the first to try it. In 2014 the province began using a biological insecticide, bacillus thuringiensis, or Btk, on budworm hotspots.
“You kind of chase it around, like a game of whack-a-mole, “ said Drew Carleton, a manager of forest health with New Brunswick’s Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development.
The whack-a-mole has worked; with a few tweaks, the province has continued its EIS spraying since, with no outbreak in sight.
The P.E.I. Humane Society says it is doing far more fundraising than it used to, and rising expenses — including the cost of animal medications — are a big reason why.
Ottawa is staring down a court-ordered deadline to submit a new plan to reform the on-reserve child welfare system, as a group of First Nations leaders and children’s advocates prepare a competing proposal.
An underpass revitalization project that was meant to pay tribute to the people of Parkdale has instead deteriorated into “a garbage dump,” according to nearby residents.
A young man has been charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm after a fire at a frat party near Western University that injured five sorority sisters, including two seriously, late Tuesday night.
The massive deal to combine one of Hollywood's oldest studios with a streaming giant hasn't even been approved yet, but it's already riling multiple related industries and politicians concerned about monopolies and media concentration.
Mi'kmaq chiefs and a former Nova Scotia justice minister are criticizing the provincial government for directing police to crack down on illegal cannabis, saying the order undermines relations with Indigenous Peoples.
For years, there has been “glaring inequity” in the way the province has allocated the millions of dollars in its county roads budget, according to Department of Transportation Minister Chuck Chiasson.
Six months after passing a law aimed at making it easier for new grocery stores to open, Manitoba's premier says lower grocery bills could be on the horizon.
Timothy Smith was acting in self-defence when he punched Landon Waddell, and shouldn't be found guilty of manslaughter, his lawyer says.
Thoroughbred horse racing at Vancouver’s Hastings Racecourse is ending after more than a century, with the operator announcing Friday it will no longer run a racing season at the historic facility.
A memorial to remember lives lost to gender-based violence was held in Charlottetown Friday, ahead of the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which is marked annually on Dec. 6.
A Calgary dentist who defrauded five insurance companies over a decade should spend up to three years in prison, the prosecution argued Friday.
B.C. Conservation Officer Service says it has called off its search for a bear responsible for an attack on a group of school children in Bella Coola, B.C. on Nov. 20.