BREEDING PESTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4930, 25 January 1926, Page 4

BREEDING PESTS.

FIBE.DAMAGED BUSH.

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

The Government Dntomologis.t (Mr David. Miller, B.Sc.) points ou.t that fire provides the open sesame for all these injurious insects tha,t cannot or do not attack the living tree. In the ordinary course, insects that attack the living tree prepare the way for those that attack ’.the but fire does this, op a large scale, andi rapidly. By fire man inroduces a new element into the “disintegrating cycle.” By killing or even injuringa, tree fire opens the way for boring insects, which multiply rapidly in a. fire-damaged bush. In one district in North America insect infestation following a fire increased 1000 percent.

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 valuabletimber thus exposed to the immediateattack of boring insects being incalculable.”