• Stark, Douglas A.
  Maine Forestry Department
  

The 1972 budworm-infested area in Maine was substantially larger than that of 1971 not only around the Cross Lake-Madawaska Lake and Squapan Lake-Oxbow spray areas, but also around the epicenters reported in 1971 in the Big 20-Beau Lake area, northeast of Moosehead Lake, west and north of Mt. Katahdin, and along the St. Croix River in Washington County. The same pattern of an enlarging epidemic and a substantial increase in infested acreage appears to be taking place in Quebec and New Brunswick also.

Meetings of the staff of the Division of Entomology and concerned industry representative in the fall of 1971 resulted in the decision to create 500,000 acres in the Cross-Madawaska Lake and Squapan-Oxbow areas of Aroostook County in 1972.

The problem persists in getting additional, effective, safe, economical insecticides registered for use against the budworm. At the present time our only insecticidal alternatives are malathion and Zectran, although fenitrothion was pilot-tested in 1970 essentially for possible registration.

Ground and aerial surveys and airport procedures were conducted as reported in preceding reports by many of the same personnel, but with a change from a centralized to a regionalized system of administration.