Western US farmers face unprecedented wave of crop-eating insects

DENVER, the United States -- Millions of crop-eating insects called Mormon crickets have hatched in America's West and are threatening to destroy millions of acres of crops.

Three weeks ago, many roadways and farmlands in the western state of Nevada were reported to be covered by the bugs, before they swept through northern Utah, southern Wyoming and Idaho, and this week, entered Colorado, "marching in massive numbers across much of the northwestern part of the state," news network Axios reported Thursday.

"Their populations are soaring -- and swarming -- like nothing seen in recent memory, which could threaten farmers' crops," Axios added.

Sightings of the insects began as far west as Oregon last month, the Craig Daily Press (CDP), a newspaper in northwestern Colorado said Thursday, adding that "Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado are experiencing one of the largest infestations of Mormon crickets in recent memory."

In Northwest Colorado, the "prehistoric looking pests are wreaking havoc in Moffat County," the CDP reported, where Jesse Schroeder, Moffat County Weed and Pest manager, said that "up to 1.5 million acres are at risk of severe damage from the crickets -- the worst I've seen during my tenure."

The insects, particularly attracted to wheat, safflower and alfalfa fields, can leave a wake of destruction in their path, said Schroeder, and that "a swarm of insects will feed and move on, molting up to seven times during the course of the summer."

The number of crickets has been steadily increasing from western to central Colorado, and although the crickets are not a danger to humans, "they are an annoyance as they enter buildings and bring with them a rather unpleasant sensation to the olfactory lobes," the CDP said.

Even worse, "they're crunching and popping under tires on Colorado (highway) 64," the Colorado Sun said Wednesday, "leaving reddish streaks on the pavement," as well as causing vehicle wrecks from their slick remains after being crushed.

The bugs can't fly but can travel long distances by hopping and crawling, and are "stretched out on (CO 64) for miles, just waves of them," said Linda Masters, a Colorado State University researcher in northeast Colorado.

"They're crunching under your tires and the road is actually red from the squashed copper-colored katydids," Masters told Colorado Public Radio.

In Colorado, the two- to three-inch long bugs are "crawling on houses, where they poop on the siding and people have to spray them off with power washers," the Colorado Sun report added.

In Nevada, "masses of the bugs have been squashed by cars and have turned roads slick and smelly," USA Today reported, adding that "residents there say they've slid off roads because of cricket carnage."

The Nevada Department of Transportation cautioned motorists to "take it slow" because of the danger in a Twitter post.

"Just to get patients into the hospital, we had people out there with leaf blowers, with brooms, at one point we even had a tractor with a snowplow on it just to push the piles of crickets and move them on their way," Steve Burrows, director of community relations at Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital in Elko told local KSL-TV.

In 2001 and 2003, Mormon cricket swarms caused up to $25 million in damages to Utah crops, USA Today reported.

The infestation has gotten so severe that officials are giving residents free insecticides and a group of western Colorado residents has planned a meeting in the hopes of persuading government agencies to aerially spray federal land in an effort to stop the bugs, as has been done in prior outbreak years, the Colorado Sun said.

"And they are devouring hay crops if they can reach them before they're stopped by poisonous bait that pest control workers are lining across the ground," Masters said.

According to the University of Nevada, Reno, some local scientists suspect the recent record rainfall is to blame.

The species turns cannibalistic when grasses, shrubs and crops are scarce. But because plant life is abundant right now, they don't need to eat each other to survive, USA Today reported.

Although "drought encourages Mormon cricket outbreaks" according to the University of Nevada, Reno, some local scientists told the Colorado Sun that the recent record rainfall and winter snowpack are to blame.

"Mormon crickets have been a problem for subsistence farmers for a long time," United States Department of Agriculture research ecologist Robert Srygley told Wyoming's KTVQ.com, adding that Mormon cricket eggs can lay dormant for at least eight years before hatching.

"We don't really know where they are," said Srygley, who has been studying the bugs for 17 years, adding that southern Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains may be "one of the areas where there's likely to be egg banks scattered around."