During a recent spruce budworm town hall hosted by state officials in Brewer, WABI (Channel 5 in Bangor) interviewed Angela Mech, associate professor of forest entomology at the University of Maine, on early efforts to prevent the pest from spreading. Early intervention started last summer, as researchers from Mech’s Spruce Budworm Lab, among other organizations, tracked “hot spots” for budworm populations. “This is kind of taking what was learned during that outbreak and implementing it for this one so that we can fix any potential mistakes and move in a more efficient way through this outbreak and just try to maintain it so that we don’t see the dead forest that we saw before,”she said. Teams saw success in identifying areas with high budworm population, allowing for a more targeted treatment with insecticides.
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