BRAGG CREEK— Bragg Creek and Redwood Meadow residents are battling an infestation of spruce budworms in the region.
A community meeting regarding the infestation of budworms will be taking place Tuesday (July 6) at 7 p.m. at the Bragg Creek Community Centre. The event will allow the community to talk about the situation, possible solutions and take steps towards forming a plan to bring to Rocky View County.
Dealing with budworms is not a new problem for the Redwood Meadows community, said Mayor Paul Sawler.
The budworms have been increasing over the last couple of years, but 2021 marks the first time the community has taken active steps to control the spread of the insect.
A pesticide spray of the entire community, including the golf course, was undertaken by the Redwood Meadows townsite and Tsuut'ina First Nation.
“This is going to mitigate the issue,” Sawler said.
Redwood Meadows was sprayed twice in June with BTK, a naturally occurring bacteria that kills the bugs and is safe for humans and pets.
An entomologist who visited the community described the level of budworms as moderate to heavy and helped advise the community on how to move forward.
“Bragg Creek is probably a year or two behind us, but it’s coming there,” Sawler said. “They don’t know borders they will just gradually spread.”
The biggest concern moving forward lies in the long-term damage the budworms inflict on the trees in the area.
“You’re at much greater risk of fire if you have a bunch of dead trees,” Sawler said. “I don’t think we’ve had a tree producing a cone in a couple of years here because they’re too busy trying to produce new growth.”
Alberta Government Forest Health Specialist and Forest Etymologist and Caroline Whitehouse said the Bragg Creek area has faced an increasing infestation of the spruce budworm over the last three years.
The spruce budworm is a native species to Alberta, but the insect can go through periodic outbreaks that can be localized or widespread. Typically, wild-spread infestations occur in northern Alberta, Whitehouse said, explaining it is rarer to see population growth in the southern parts of the province.
“It’s one of those insects that go through periodic outbreaks,” Whitehouse said.
The current population growth in the Bragg Creek area could be a result of weather conditions, Whitehouse said, or the older and larger trees in the area serving as the perfect incubator for the bugs.
The larvae of the budworms are what cause the damage to trees. The caterpillars feed on the newest needles on the trees, as they devour the tree, they leave silk behind.
The feeding will come to an end in the next two to three weeks as they transform into moths.
The trees can take on a ragged look at the bugs feast spruce needles, but for the most part, the foliage is resilient and it takes several years of severe defoliation for the trees to be at risk of dying.
“You would need to have a really large and severe, severe outbreak that occurred over multiple years that caused the trees to die,” Whitehouse said.
The bio-pesticide BTK, specific to moths and butterflies, can be used to contain localized infestations on trees. BTK is a better alternative to broad-spectrum pesticides that kill all insects and run the risk of infiltrating water systems.
The BTK must be applied at the right time of the budworm's life cycle to take proper action, and the Bragg Creek area is getting beyond that stage.
“It’s something to use very sparingly and very specifically,” Whitehouse said. “It’s uncomfortable and I know people want to take action, but sometimes when the cure is worse than the disease, you’re doing more harm to the environment than you really are anything else.”
Forestry conducts aerial surveys every year to track the damage done by forest insects like the spruce budworm. These aerial surveys will be expanded to cover some municipalities and private land to track budworm outbreaks in spring 2022.
The next step for Forestry will be studying the data collected from the surveys to assess how the widespread and severity of the infestation might be.
“The very first thing is to monitor and understand what the population is doing,” Whitehouse said. “We really need to understand the level of infestation before you really take any action to control— We can tolerate a certain level of infestation.”
Alberta Forestry continues to monitor the situation over the summer and will assess the budworm population soon.
“We’re happy to work with jurisdictions and come up with plans and share information about what risks the spruce budworms would be posing to their forest,” Whitehouse said.
Bragg Creek resident Mel Lomenda’s yard has been overtaken by budworms.
Lomenda lives in the heart of the hamlet and has been battling the bugs over the summer. His backyard is covered with worms cascading from the trees with silk webs.
“There are thousands— It’s like a plague of biblical proportions,” Lomenda said.
The trees in his yard are covered in the fine silk webbing from the bugs, and for the most part, a good foot of each tree branch is brown. The worms' droppings, which appear as a find green sand, have enveloped his yard with a cloud of fine green dust.
The worms have become an increasing nuisance in the community over the last three years, he said, but 2021 has proven to be the most challenging year yet.
“Last year was very bad and this year appears to be even worse— Which in itself is amazing,” Lomenda said. “When I come into the house, I have to make sure I don’t have caterpillars on me.”
He is concerned an infestation of this level has the potential to result in the death of a forest in five to six years, he said, and it would be a heartbreaking loss to see the signature Spruce Trees of Bragg Creek lost.
“The scary thing is I think this is the start of a smouldering fire,” Lomenda said. "If we let this continue for a couple more years, we’re going to see dead trees … A lot of problems for homeowners, it’s a fire hazard.”
