Dortmund.
The fight against the oak processionary moth starts again. Tits should help. In Dortmund, people can report their nests online.
The nasty caterpillars are coming: When the first oak leaves sprout, municipalities and road maintenance departments start fighting oak processionary moths again. The pest’s stinging hairs can cause severe skin irritation or breathing difficulties in humans.
Experts spray infested oak trees along the motorways and state roads with a biocide. “It’s not dangerous for people,” says Frank Eilermann, an expert for wood maintenance at Autobahn Westfalen. “But if the young caterpillars eat the sprayed leaves, they die.” According to Strassen.NRW, helicopters are also used in individual cases for the spraying campaigns. If necessary, the nests are removed from the trees with large suction machines. Signs on affected parking and rest areas warn of the dangerous caterpillars.
Also read: This is how the oak processionary moth irritates human skin
Tits are natural predators of the oak processionary moth
In addition, nesting boxes for tits, the caterpillars’ natural predators, hang along some motorways. The city of Bielefeld also purposefully installed tit boxes in city cemeteries for the first time last year. In addition, traps are attached, as Christoph Wessel from the Bielefeld environmental company explains: “A hose is attached all around the trunk of an oak tree. During their procession, the caterpillars then walk along this hose and fall into a funnel.”
In many cities, such as Dortmund, Bielefeld and Gütersloh, citizens can report caterpillar nests online to the city. The Dortmund Green Spaces Office has also set up a “caterpillar alarm hotline” that accepts telephone information. Anyone who discovers the caterpillars on their property should not tackle the removal themselves, but hire a pest controller, advises the city of Gütersloh.
Several hundred animals live in a colony
The caterpillars of the oak processionary moth, which can be up to three centimeters long, are brown-yellow or grey-black. They live in so-called colonies with several hundred animals and line up when they change places like in a procession – hence their name. Their nests are round webs that can reach the size of a soccer ball. From the third larval stage, the caterpillars grow fine stinging hairs that break easily and can be spread over long distances by the wind. (dpa)
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