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Pest Management & EQIP Working Together for Forest Management

Submitted by Misty Seaboldt, Forester, Colville

If you have driven around the Colville Reservation lately, you may have noticed little cardboard tents hanging in the trees.  No these are not houses for really little squirrels, but an innovated pest management technique implemented by the Forestry Division for the Colville Confederated Tribes.

In recent years pest infestations of our forest lands has become a growing, or should we say a killing problem.  Here in northeast Washington, if the fire doesn’t get you, the beetles might.  One pest that is not readily mentioned is the Western pine shoot borer (Eucosma sonomana).  This small rather unassuming moth begins its reproductive flight early in the year and continues for about a month.  The female moth deposits one egg per tree under the scales of the terminal bud.  These moths rarely kill the tree but can and do cause growth reduction and deformation (Darek Czokajlo Ph.D.).

 In 2005 and 2006, the Colville Confederated Tribes and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) teamed up through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to help with the management of these pests.  “Using Dr. Czokajlo’s figures, the losses that would potentially be avoided are easily in the millions… considering that; we harvest about 3,500 acres a year on the Reservation.  Dr. Czokajlo estimates a savings over the rotation as $1,000 - $2,000 per acre, and we have approximately 350,000 acres on which ponderosa pine is the preferred management species,” said Barry Coles (CCT- Silviculturist).

The Colville Confederated Tribe began using Pheromone bait wing traps.  These traps showed that some areas of the tribe’s forest have large Western pine shoot borer populations. The photo on the left shows untreated control for population monitoring.  The photo on the right shows infestation after use of the Pheromone wing traps.


 Barry Coles and his crew began using a formulation insecticide.  This product uses between 1 and 2 ounces of Permethrin per acre.  This low concentration allows for a safe but still effective control of the Western pine shoot borer.  One problem that the tribe currently faces is that treatment is fairly expensive to implement because of the labor required to bait each trap individually.   Barry estimates that it costs, roughly $66.00 per acre.

 EQIP dollars were used to help fund this massive pest management project.  It is our hope that this treatment will help protect thousands of acres of young forests for future generations.

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