Hoppers, Crickets Return For Seconds

Like the sequel to a bad movie, grasshoppers and giant Mormon crickets have for the second year invaded pockets of Eastern Washington farms and rangeland.

While you won’t see mobs of panicky people running down Main Street, many are bracing to combat Melanoplus Sanguinipes - migratory grasshoppers - with genocidal sprays that cost thousands of dollars and eat into farm profits.

“The critters are here, we’re going to have to do something,” said Timmie Blauert of Washtucna, Wash.

Blauert and her husband, Fred, grow 200 acres of irrigated alfalfa in the southeast corner of Adams County. They spent $5,000 spraying grasshoppers in 1994, one of the worst outbreaks of the voracious pests in recent years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated 120,000 acres of Eastern Washington were infested with grasshoppers last year, damaging wheat and hay. Damage was so extensive that the U.S. Small Business Administration offered lowinterest loans to businesses that lost sales because of poor crop yields.

Federal pest experts say grasshoppers and their long, hard-backed cousin, the Mormon cricket, aren’t as numerous as last year. A wet spring caused the babies to die of disease and exhaustion. Moreover, lush rangeland fed by the rains has given the migratory pests little reason to move into fields of food crops and cattle pastures.

“But I’m hedging my bets until this month is over,” said Dave Keim, regional manager of the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Spokane. “Right now, we see very little activity.”

There are problem areas. The Colville Confederated Tribes this week approved a massive spray program to rid the Ferry County reservation of marching bands of Mormon crickets. Keim’s agency later this month will attack 20,000 to 30,000 acres with the pesticides carbaryl and malathion.

In Franklin County, wheat farmer Walt Neff said Mormon crickets have returned to his farm in droves. He sprayed the crickets two years ago, but left them alone in 1994 when a flock of sea gulls arrived to feast on the fat insects. The gulls returned last month, and Neff hopes they’ll do a better job than expensive pesticides.

“The sea gulls are working full time,” he said.

, DataTimes