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Too Much Sprayin’ Back when I was a PHC tech, I was just told which pesticides to use. There was no case-by-case assessment. This is because what is implemented in the field is determined by scalability and speed; not looking at the horticulture at all. It takes far too much time to be that nuanced, and businesses look for the cheapest and fastest solutions with the highest returns. I had been led to believe that insects are the enemies of trees. And incidentally, I trained our clients of this too. Insects don’t just ‘attack’ trees, I see that language used a lot. To get a little pedantic here; using only violence to describe every interaction insects have with trees isn’t accurate at all. A totally unfair generalization. And, frankly, it is a boring and poor way to interpret nature. Not only are they foundational to food webs, they’re eating, they’re reproducing, they’re nesting–all things that all animals do. Not ‘attacking’. Pollinators get a lot of attention, but there are many other things insects do. Most insect activity is part of a normal ecosystem’s functioning. Most don’t threaten tree longevity. Some insect-tree relationships are even mutually beneficial, and really only a tiny fraction of them pose serious, long-term threats. I now often tell clients that herbivory is mostly a good thing. Leaves are food. You can’t change that.
I understand why we think trees are being attacked by insects. Some insects are indeed problematic to trees. It may be fair to say that about emerald ash borers, right? But that is an exception, and definitely not the rule.
In population-biology, insects and their predators have cycles that balance themselves out. This is a well-studied phenomenon. Sure, there’s some point intervention might be needed, but this isn’t always in the form of spraying pesticides. But again, that’s not how our industry does things. If you find it, you spray for it. Forever.
Framing insects as malevolent is done to convince tree guys that by spraying trees multiple times a year, they’re defending trees. And then this misguidance is passed down from them to their clients, the psy-op works from the top-down. That’s exactly what happened to me.
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