Pests & Pathogens

Insect Monitoring Traps

Transcript of video:

Hi! My name is Ryan Crandall I'm a Forest Health Specialist with the Forest Health Bureau within the Division of Forest and Lands and today we'll be talking about some of our insect monitoring traps.

And so here we have two different kinds of traps that kind of operate in the same way.

We have this multi-funnel trap and we also have an intercept panel trap.

And what these are used for is catching various invasive insects which are woodboring insects.

Many different wood borers have been known to cause widespread destruction of our native tree species in our forests, and so essentially how these two traps operate is they mimic the outline of a tree trunk.

And so when an insect's flying through the forest, it'll see this, think it's a tree trunk, hit the trap and fall into a lower cup.

And so by putting these traps out in sensitive areas, we can monitor for their spread and if we detect them,

we can implement management strategies to try and reduce the harmful impacts of those pests.

But we also have two other kinds of traps and so I'll show you those traps over here...

And so these are some of our bucket traps.

These traps we use in the North Country and so if you're ever up there fishing or hiking you might come across some of these traps.

We are specifically using these to catch spruce budworm which is a native insect that periodically outbreaks,

and when it outbreaks it can cause widespread defoliation and mortality to the spruce fir forest.

And so by placing these traps all around the North Country,

we can go back to these traps and see how many moths were captured.

If we get over a threshold number of moths per trap

that will inform us that we need to start managing for this insect to protect the spruce fir resource.

And so if you're in the woods and you see any of these traps, just know that they're doing their job,

you know leave them alone, and they're helping us to manage our forests and make sure that they're healthy.