Rancher Skye Krebs told CBS News that the outbreaks have been "truly biblical."
The Western United States is dealing with a cannibal cricket crisis.
CBS News reported that Mormon crickets, which can grow to be longer than two inches, are starting to reappear in several states in the West, including Oregon, Utah, Montana, and Nevada.
April Aamodt, a resident of the small Columbia River town of Arlington, tried to fight the 2017 outbreak with what she had on hand.
"I got the lawnmower out and I started mowing them and killing them," she told CBS News. "I took a straight hoe and I'd stab them."
Aamodt earned the nickname "cricket queen," after organizing volunteers to tackle the infestation.
These insects are native to western North America. Its name originates from the 1800s when they destroyed the Utah fields of Mormon settlers. But because of the drought and rising temperatures, which are ideal for the insects, outbreaks have gotten worse throughout the West.
Arlington, Oregon, saw its worst Mormon cricket outbreak since the 1940s in 2017. The large insects' crushed entrails covered the roadways, making them "greasy," which hurt the surrounding wheat harvests, reported CBS News.
Rancher Skye Krebs told CBS News that the outbreaks have been "truly biblical."
"On the highways, once you get them killed, then the rest of them come," he explained to the outlet. Mormon crickets are cannibalistic and, if not satisfied with enough nourishment, will eat one another, whether they are living or dead according to CBS News.
Classified as shield-backed katydids, not “true” crickets, the insects are flightless. However, they can travel at least a quarter of a mile in a day, Jordan Maley, an Oregon State University Extension agent, told CBS News.
In order to evaluate the issue and establish a Mormon cricket and grasshopper "suppression" program, the Oregon Legislature budgeted $5 million last year. In early June, $1.2 million more was authorized for the program.
It's a part of a bigger effort by state and federal officials in the Western United States to cope with an influx of Mormon crickets and grasshoppers that has spread from Montana to Nevada.
According to Oregon agriculture officials, Mormon crickets and grasshoppers alone destroyed 10 million acres of rangeland in 18 counties in 2021.
Private landowners, such as farmers and ranchers, are now able to request that the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) survey their property under a new state program. Oregon state officials recommend the aerial application of an insecticide called diflubenzuron if there are more than three Mormon crickets or eight grasshoppers per square yard according to CBS News. It prevents the development of the insects from becoming adults.
There were 201 Mormon crickets per square yard in certain sites close to Arlington that were measured in May right after the hatch.
CBS News reported that landowners can be reimbursed for up to 75% of the cost.
Rancher Diana Fillmore is one of the participants in the new cost-sharing program. She told CBS News "the ground is just crawling with grasshoppers" on her property.
She was advised by ODA to cure her 988-acre ranch in Arock, southeast Oregon. Nearly 500 acres of her land will actually be treated because the program's methodology calls for administering pesticide to only half the suggested area, alternately targeting swathes then skipping the next one CBS News reported.
In light of the harm from the previous year, Fillmore made the decision to take action.
"It was horrible," Fillmore told CBS News. "Grasshoppers just totally wiped out some of our fields." She had to pay $45,000 for hay that she typically wouldn't have to.
Since the 1980s, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has sprayed pesticides on millions of acres to limit outbreaks, continuing a grasshopper suppression campaign that dates back to the 1930s.
William Wesela, director of national policy at APHIS told CBS News that the organization sprayed 807,000 acres of rangeland in seven Western states in 2021. And according to Jake Bodart, the organization's State Plant health director for Oregon, it has received requests for treatment so far this year from Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.
Environmental organizations, meanwhile, are against the plan. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation filed a lawsuit against APHIS in the Portland U.S. District Court last month, charging APHIS with hurting rangeland ecosystems, failing to fully educate the public about treatment sites, and not assessing alternatives to pesticides, according to CBS News.
According to environmentalists who spoke to CBS News, fewer grasshoppers mean less food for the animals that eat them.
"We're very concerned about the impact of these broad, large sprays to our grassland and rangeland ecosystems" which can be “toxic to a wide variety of insects,” like bees, Sharon Selvaggio, the Xerces Society's Pesticide Program Specialist told CBS News.
"We're not trying to stop APHIS from ever using pesticides again," Advocates for the West staff attorney Andrew Missel told CBS News. This nonprofit law firm that filed the suit is aiming to reform the program.
The "cricket queen" Aamodt told CBS News that locals in Arlington had tried out several pesticide alternatives. In order to catch the insects in 2017, some people taped duct tape on trees. The next year, municipal authorities imported goats to graze hills.
For the time being, those working to prevent further infestations are hopeful that the new state initiative will provide crucial assistance, CBS News reported.
