A model for determining the benefit-cost ratio of controlling damage by vertebrate pests to conifer seedlings requires knowledge of the amount, distribution, and duration of animal damage, reduction in damage associated with control, costs of control, methodology and value of trees at harvesto Because control costs occurring in the present must be compared with savings recovered decades later i...

HE white pine weevil (Pissodes strobi (Peck)) is one of the most destructive forest insect pests in the Northeast. By causing forked and crooked boles, extreme limbihess, and weaknesses in the wood itself, it has greatly reduced the usefulness and value of the injured white pine for all the more exacting needs of the lumbe• and building trades. This has been one .of the principal factors respon...

Improved understanding of the factors determining the insecticidal activity, the mammalian toxicity, and the stability in air and light of natural and synthetic pyrethroids has led to a series of new compounds with a very favorable combination of properties. Their characteristics include outstanding potency to insects, low toxicity to mammals associated with rapid metabolic breakdown and, in ap...

The field investigation during 2013-14 at Talwandi sabo, Punjab revealed that there are 19 insect pests identified from kharif crops whereas 13 insect pests were recorded from rabi crops. The 5 bio control agents and 2 ant species were recorded from agriculture field. In these Hemiptera and Lepidoptera are having maximum number of insect pests causing major damage to both kharif and rabi crops....

The Weyerhaeuser Corporation is a large forest products company operating private bare-root nurseries in the United States and British Columbia, Canada (Littke 1994a). Due to concerns over the continued availability of methyl bromide for tree seedling production, Weyerhaeuser formulated a strategy to identify and investigate potential alternatives to methyl bromide including alternatives that r...

Genetically modified baculoviruses offer a promising alternative to chemical insecticides in the control of agricultural and forest insect pests. A novel bacmid, HaBacYH6, was constructed in which the ecdysteroid UDP-glucosyltransferase gene (egt) was replaced with a bacterial replication cassette containing a mini-F replicon, a kanamycin resistance gene, and the attTn7 site. Insertion of the e...

Interactions between plants and insect herbivores are important determinants of plant productivity in managed and natural vegetation. In response to attack, plants have evolved a range of defenses to reduce the threat of injury and loss of productivity. Crop losses from damage caused by arthropod pests can exceed 15% annually. Crop domestication and selection for improved yield and quality can ...

Anthropogenic impacts increasingly drive ecological and evolutionary processes at many spatio-temporal scales, demanding greater capacity to predict and manage their consequences. This is particularly true for agro-ecosystems, which not only comprise a significant proportion of land use, but which also involve conflicting imperatives to expand or intensify production while simultaneously reduci...

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a useful alternative or supplement to synthetic chemical pesticides in agriculture, forest management, and control of mosquitoes and some other biting insects. When modified Bt cry genes are inserted into a plant species (e.g., corn, cotton, potato, canola, rice), the plant expresses active larvicidal proteins in its tissues. The toxins continue to be synthesized ...

Governments around the world have enacted a variety of orest and watershed management policies intended to address range of natural resource issues. Examples include policies hat address reforestation following timber harvest in Europe e.g., Bauer et al., 2004) and water quantity and quality protecion in South Africa (e.g., South African National Water Act, 998). Although often effective, such ...