Tent caterpillar infestation at provincial park
A normally relaxing weekend at the lake had a surprising twist for some people when they found themselves camping in the middle of a tent caterpillar infestation.
Moose Mountain Provincial Park was the site of an infestation, with tent caterpillars travelling in swarms on roads and taking over the bathrooms.
“It’s really not as bad as people are saying. It’s just they swarm and people see a pile and they freak out,” said Cody Slykhuis, manager and owner of Allison Park Store at the park.
It has been business as usual at his store, with customers coming in and buying different home remedies like vinegar, oil and soap in order to try and get rid of the caterpillars.
“I had spoken to the park manager about cleaning up focus areas such as the bathrooms and the service centres and whatnot. And so they’re going to be keeping up with that a lot more throughout the day,” Slykhuis said.
The hardest-hit area of the park was Fish Creek Campground.
“If I walk out of my store, I’m less than a kilometre from the campground and when I walk out my store door I don’t see any trees stripped or anything like. There’s just focus areas where (the caterpillars have) gone through,” he said.
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Parks, Tourism and Culture is aware of the infestation.
“This past winter has created perfect conditions for insect infestations across the province right now. We’ve had a short, mild, warm winter and an early spring,” said Pat Mackasey, park forest ecologist with the ministry.
“We’ve got infestations happening in areas we traditionally don’t. And it’s actually a provincial outbreak in nature.”
Currently there is not much that the park can do to decrease the numbers as the caterpillars go through their natural life cycle; they should be cocooning and becoming moths within the next few weeks. The moths will then lay eggs which may lead to another problem next year.
“We initiate over-wintering egg mass surveys, where we wait till frozen conditions and we go out and sample various aspen trees in different locations in the provincial park,” Mackasey said.
If they determine egg numbers are high enough, they will then spray BTK from an airplane over the park.
BTK is a bacterium that lands on tree leaves, where it will be ingested within two days by the caterpillars and kills them. It has to be sprayed when the caterpillars are 9.5 to 13 millimetres in length, and does not affect the ecosystem in other ways.
“We do want to maintain a good visitor experience and also let the public know of the epidemic,” Mackasey said. “We don’t expect (the caterpillars) to be out there for the summer period.”