Call #4: Dowd is Also Wrong on Mormon Crickets
When i first read Dowd’s line item of $1 million for Mormon cricket control, my first though was “why do Mormons care about controlling crickets?” Surprise! It’s actually an enormous species of katydid (picture a bug the size of a mouse) that eats anything and everything in its path, and poses an enormous threat to vegetables and other species of insects:
Mormon crickets damage forage plants on rangeland and cultivated crops in the path of their migrations. The adult Mormon cricket is a large insect; males average 3,400 mg live weight and females 4,100 mg (dry weight: males 960 mg, females 1,330 mg). Feeding tests demonstrate that during its nymphal period and 20 days of adult life, an average Mormon cricket consumes 3,518 mg of vegetation (dry weight). Calculations based on this figure indicate that at a density of one per square yard the Mormon cricket consumes an amount of rangeland forage equal to 38 pounds dry weight per acre. Because of their migratory habit, Mormon crickets may be present in a particular site for no more than three or four days. In this short time, their damage to rangeland is perceptible but not measurable by standard quantitative techniques.
The Mormon cricket breeds only infrequently in cultivated fields, but migrating bands of nymphs or adults may completely destroy fields of sugarbeets, small grains, and alfalfa. During the 1937 outbreak, crop damage in Montana amounted to $500,000 and in Wyoming to $383,000.
Does Maureen Dowd really think that preventing crop destruction is a waste of money? Apparently so, especially given her objections to preventing colony collapse disorder. Here’s what Utah State University researchers had to say in a report (warning pdf):
Grasshoppers are a threat to crops and rangeland across the West, but Utah always has had a special historical relationship with Mormon Crickets. Anabrus simplex has been known as a Mormon Cricket since 1848 when hordes of the insect started eating the early Mormon settlers’ much-needed crops. When settlers prayed for help, an equal horde of seagulls descended and ate enough of the crickets to save the crops and possibly the lives of the pioneers. Ever since, the California gull has been Utah’s state bird and the ravenous cricket has taken on a religious nickname….
Grasshoppers and Mormon Crickets can be devastating to Utah’s most profitable crops — alfalfa, corn, oats, wheat, rye and barley …
The insects, of course, do not respect farm boundaries. They hatch and migrate off bordering lands, and at times this is extremely frustrating to a grower trying to control an infestation. This is where communities pulling together to do a county-wide spray program comes into play. Also, the importance of government spraying of public lands bordering cropland cannot be stressed enough.
Maybe Maureen’s just really mad about Mormon support for Proposition 8,/a>, but I can’t see any good reason to allow these food crops to be destroyed by insect infestation. Again I ask: what does Maureen Dowd have against protecting our food supply?
I’m expecting a call back from Utah State’s researchers, and will update when I can.
So far, Dowd’s batting 0 for 4. I’d like to have an accountability free job where I can just cut and paste lists into a word document and publish it as a column in America’s paper of record. Maybe I can get the Times to pay for a fancy vacation too!
March 4th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I think Maureen has been lucky to stay in the position she has for so long. Never fear though, there is a Hog Farm waiting for her just over the horizon. She’ll look cute in those rubber knee-high boots, and shit scraper in hand. Or maybe she’ll get an even more lucrative job at a chicken farm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzTX8SVJtis
It could happen.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
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