Locusts in Oregon?

Young Grasshopper

COGwriter

The following news item was of interest:

Grasshopper plague takes a tur for the worse

Baker City Herald, Oregon – July 10, 2008

A grasshopper plague spawned in drought-parched rangeland where the voracious insects laid their eggs last summer, is spreading to wheat, hay and potato fields, where crop damage could be devastating.

“The USDA’s threshold for economic damage is eight grasshoppers per square yard. In some heavily infested areas, we’ve had counts of 100 to 120, and possibly up to 140 grasshoppers per square yard,” said Cory Parsons, Oregon State University Extension agent for Baker County.

“They are probably as close to an epidemic as they can be in Baker Valley,” Parsons said. “When you get into them, you know, because the ground is just crawling with grasshoppers.”

Three weeks ago the grasshopper infestation was limited to pockets scattered around the county, primarily on rangeland, but Parsons said the situation has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

“We’re finding grasshoppers from the north end of the Baker Valley off Ladd Canyon all the way to Huntington, and from Medical Springs, Sparta and Keating to the Burnt River, Unity and Hereford,” Parsons said.

“Eagle and Pine Valley, around Halfway and Richland, the Sumpter Valley and Whitney Valley are the only places we have no grasshopper populations,” Parsons said.

When grasshoppers are small they typically remain in the dryer rangeland areas where they hatch from eggs, but once they mature and sprout wings, Parsons said “they will move into wheat, alfalfa and potato fields and do some substantial damage.”

That scenario appears to be coming to pass, Parsons said, based on phone calls to the Extension Service and aerial pesticide applicators from concerned farmers and ranchers across Baker County.

“With the rangeland drying up, the guys out cutting hay are finding grasshoppers coming into hay ground,” Parsons said.

The infestation extends far beyond Baker County to an estimated 1 million acres across Northeastern Oregon, according to reports from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which dispatched a team to help locate and map areas with the heaviest grasshopper populations.

Aerial pesticide spraying initiated this week is designed to kill flying adult grasshoppers after spring applications of biological control products failed to knock down the grasshopper population at the egg or nymph stage, Parsons said…

He warned landowners who do nothing and hope for the best that “once grasshoppers finish devouring vegetation on your land, they will move to your neighbors.”…

The downside of applying broad-spectrum pesticides is that they can also kill off beneficial insects ranging from lady bugs to honey bees, Parsons said.

In an effort to protect the region’s already declining honeybee population, Parsons is encouraging landowners and pesticide applicators to notify owners of beehives to move their hives before spraying to control grasshoppers. http://www.bakercityherald.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=6869

Killing honey bees and ladybugs in order to control grasshoppers can lead to food reductions and increases of other insects.

Infestations of grasshoppers, like the ancient locust plagues, can lead to severe food shortages (locusts are one of the problems China is having this year, please see China Disasters). The grasshoppers combined with the fact that the USA has had some severe earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and wildfires this year suggest that perhaps things are starting to turn against this nation.

The Bible indicates that when there are a lot of grasshoppers, that God expects His people to pray to Him:

28 When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; 29 whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows his own burden and his own grief, and spreads out his hands to this temple: 30 then hear from heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of the sons of men), 31 that they may fear You, to walk in Your ways as long as they live (2 Chronicles 6:28-31).

The Bible encourages prayer, forgiveness, and personal repentance.

Now the end itself (meaning the Great Tribulation) cannot occur for several years yet. However, things may get quite difficult before they get really bad.

Two prophetic articles of interest may include:

End of Mayan Calendar 2012–Might 2012 Mean Something? There is a Mayan calendar prediction for change in 2012. 2012 changes were also centuries ago predicted by the Hopi Native Americans and the Hindu Indians (who were not even on the same continent). Do these Mayan/Hindu/Hopi prophecies have any value? Why might Satan have inspired this date? Does the Dresden codex show destruction of the earth by flood? Can the great tribulation start before 2012?
Who is the King of the North? Is there one? Do biblical and Roman Catholic prophecies point to the same leader? Should he be followed? Who will be the King of the North discussed in Daniel 11? Is a nuclear attack prophesied to happen to the English-speaking peoples of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? When do the 1335 days, 1290 days, and 1260 days (the time, times, and half a time) of Daniel 12 begin? When does the Bible show that economic collapse will affect the United States?