SASKATOON — If cool, wet weather continues, grasshoppers could soon be extinct, says the Saskatchewan government’s insect specialist.
“If we have one more wet year, we’ll probably have to put those bugs on the endangered species list,” said entomologist Lloyd Harris.
Grasshoppers are a heat-dependent insect. The rainy summer that damaged prairie crops seemed to be a natural grasshopper pesticide. The 1994 grass-hopper forecast for Saskatchewan suggests infestations will be light to very light.
“We’re quickly approaching the zero point,” said Harris.
He estimates only two municipalities, near Kindersley and Maple Creek, will have grasshopper problems.
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Manitoba also reports that grasshoppers are not expected to be much of a problem. Andy Kolach, extension entomologist in Carman, said, “the weather has really done them in.”
In Alberta, 1,800 sites were surveyed last year and grasshopper infestations should be light, said Dan Johnson, an Agriculture Canada research scientist in Lethbridge. During the survey Johnson found grasshoppers almost three weeks behind in development. At the end of July, their normal breeding season, they looked like grasshoppers should at the beginning of the month.
But farmers shouldn’t throw away their pesticides yet. Johnson said 1952 was one of the wettest years on record and the following year agronomists couldn’t find a trace of grasshoppers in the field. Yet they still came back.
