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EASTERN SHADE TREE CONFERENCE 
STORM DAMAGE IN VERMONT AND THE FOREST 
TENT CATERPILLAR 
By Harold L. Bailey, Director, Division of Plant Pest Control, Vermont 
Department of Agriculture 
Approximately 20 percent of tapped maples in Vermont were blown 
down by the great storm of September 21, 1938. The number of maple 
shade trees felled and others most susceptible to forest tent caterpillar 
damage has not been estimated. Though not comparable to the loss 
in shade elms, it was considerable. This loss in maples, had it been 
evenly distributed, would have been serious at best, but it would have 
been far less serious than that which we actually have as a result of con¬ 
centration of the damage. Far from being evenly distributed, a very 
large part of the hurricane damage is in the northeastern quarter of the 
state. In Orange, in Caledonia, in Orleans and in parts of Windsor, 
Washington and Essex Counties, sugar places with from 50 percent to 
nearly 100 percent downed trees are the rule rather than the exception 
and there are wide swaths of fallen forest timber. This not only means 
the loss of the fallen trees themselves, but it makes a debris problem of 
serious import. That it has rendered many of the remaining trees in¬ 
accessible for tapping and has created a fire hazard is fully realized; 
that it is very likely to create a serious insect problem has not been so 
generally recognized. If, as seems probable, the full complement of 
insects on the fallen trees concentrate—they or their progeny—on those 
remaining, the result may easily be disastrous. And this concerns shade 
trees as well as those in sugar orchards and forest areas. To some ex¬ 
tent at least, the situation must apply to other sections than Vermont. 
Danger of this massing of insects applies to borers and numerous other 
species, but especially, I think, to the forest tent caterpillar. Ironically 
enough the area where the storm hit hardest in Vermont was the one 
section in which the maples had not been damaged by caterpillars. 
The forest tent caterpillar has appeared in outbreak form in Vermont 
during each of the past four years. The first case of defoliation reported 
in the present outbreak occurred in a sugar maple orchard at Bennington 
in June, 1935, and subsequently that season stripping or near-stripping 
of maple or oak trees was noted at several other points scattered about 
the southern half of the state. Reports from adjoining states point to 
similar occurrences. 
