ARLINGTON, Ore. -- Driving down a windy canyon road in northern Oregon rangeland, Jordan Maley and April Aamodt are on the look out for Mormon crickets, giant insects that can ravage crops.They're not hard to spot. The insects, which can grow larger than 2 inches , blot the asphalt.
It's part of a larger effort by state and federal authorities in the U.S. West to deal with an explosion of grasshoppers and Mormon crickets that has hit from Montana to Nevada. But some environmental groups oppose the programs, which rely on the aerial spraying of pesticides across large swaths of land.
"We had all those high-value crops and irrigation circles," he explained."We just had to do what we could to keep them from getting into that." Diana Fillmore is a rancher participating in the new cost-sharing initiative. She says"the ground is just crawling with grasshoppers" on her property. The U.S. government's grasshopper suppression program dates back to the 1930s, and USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has sprayed millions of acres with pesticides to control outbreaks since the 1980s.
But environmental groups oppose the program. Last month, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and the Center for Biological Diversity sued APHIS in the U.S. District Court in Portland. In their filing, they accuse APHIS of harming rangeland ecosystems and not adequately informing the public about treatment areas.
The Trumpets are blowin'...stay faithful people
Another slow news day at 190 North?
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