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Post by beetlehorn on May 26, 2014 3:49:02 GMT -8
Last fall I created a video about collecting the Eastern Buckmoth, (Hemileuca maia). Yesterday I went back to the area to check on a rearing sleeve I placed on an oak branch. Making my way down an old logging road I noticed a black cluster at the tip of an oak limb. Moving in closer I found that it was actually a small group of wild Hemileuca maia larvae. It was just 100 yards or so from the location where most of the video was made. After driving to another location a very short distance away I was somewhat disheartened to see a logging operation going on. It looked like all the trees felled were different species of oak. It also looked to me like they were just getting started, so how much of the area will be cut down is yet to see. This is just another example of how it's not us collectors that threaten the insects we so admire. It is the chainsaws, bulldozers, and skidders that make the drastic change to their habitat. Hopefully the destruction won't be too extensive.
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Post by prillbug4 on May 26, 2014 4:41:45 GMT -8
Maybe, they'll destroy the whole area. It wouldn't surprise me. Jeff Prill
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Post by nomad on May 26, 2014 10:53:28 GMT -8
A real shame. I am surprised they are still logging oak forest in America. Up to the 1970s they clear felled many Oak woods in the U.K and then planted the devastated areas with cash crops of conifers and dense Beech plantation. Add to this a complete lack of woodland management such as copping during those days, and we find the real reason why our many of our woodland species became rare or extinct. When collecting was at its peak, not one of our woodland butterflies was threatened, they remained common.
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Post by joee30 on May 27, 2014 8:04:49 GMT -8
I noticed that too in certain places within Ft. Campbell. I wonder if it's either just strip logging, or they grow the trees for that purpose, but mostly it's pine and oak that are felled.
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