BREEDING PESTS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 97, 19 January 1926, Page 6

BREEDING PESTS

FIRE-DAMAGED BUSH

An aspect of bush-burning (accidental or otherwise) that is very little realised is the stimulus that insect pests receive from the dead timber of a bush-fired area.

The Government Entomologist (Mr. David Miller, B.Sc.) points out that fire provides the open sesame for all those injurious insects that cannot or do not attack the living tree. In the ordinary course, insects that attack tlie living tree prepare the way for those that attack the dead, but fire does this on a large scale, and rapidly. By fire, man introduces a new element into the “disintegrating cycle.” By killing or even injuring a tree, fire opens the way for boring insects, ■ which multiply rapidly in a fire-damaged bush. In one district in North infestation following a fire increased 1000. per cent. In “Forest and Timber Insects of New Zealand” Mr. Miller points out that dead or damaged timber provides breeding grounds from which spring the boring Insects that attack also the milled timber. “The extent of fire-killed forests in New Zealand is comparatively great, and increases each year, the amount of valuable timber thus exposed to the immediate attack of boring insects being incalculable?’