Another infestation to battle

Movie crews aren't coming to Evelyn Holzman's backyard in an unincorporated area between Elgin and Hoffman Estates.

But if they did, she believes they would have the perfect backdrop for a horror flick -- their scraggly branches, devoid of leaves, reaching out like a monster.

"It's just sickening," Holzman said of the damage caused by gypsy moths. "It's very sad."

Just a few years ago, fighting the spread of gypsy moths in the suburbs was a top priority.

The state paid for helicopters to blanket towns with chemicals to kill the small caterpillars or disrupt adult mating cycles.

But gypsy moth funding has been cut as pests like the emerald ash borer, Asian long-horned beetle, and the Japanese beetle grab headlines. And this summer is expected to be a high mosquito season with all the additional standing water from recent flooding and rains.

The main moth infestation area also has moved south and west into Will and Kane counties, so towns where moth pockets have re-emerged must find their own ways to deal with the problem.

And in most cases, park districts, municipalities and homeowners must battle the pests themselves.

Jim Cavanaugh, the gypsy moth program manager for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said his office has fielded calls from communities in Cook, Lake, DuPage and McHenry counties.

But these areas are too far from the main infestation area for the state to pay for spraying, he said.

Also, this year's funding for moth spraying is 15 percent less than it was two years ago.

"Everybody tries to call us in (to spray)," Cavanaugh said. "The criteria would change if we had more money."

Curt Barrett, deputy village manager for Glen Ellyn, said officials have received more calls this year about moth infestations but had to divert funding to fight the emerald ash borer.

Village leaders hope to set aside more money in 2009 for spraying, but they don't know how much they can afford or whether to have a mass spraying or just treat public trees.

"We've kind of been left behind. Once it passed through here, they weren't going to pay for any sprayings," Barrett said. "We're just finding more demand than dollars in dealing with all these tree issues."

In Holzman's case, she doesn't have to deal with the moths -- yet.

The dead oaks are just beyond her yard in a 29-acre site in Hoffman Estates on which Dartmoor Homes plans to build 55 luxury homes.

But she is concerned the infestation could spread to her 2-acre wooded lot and others.

"I don't know how far it's going to go," she said.

Mark Schwartz, park supervisor for the Hoffman Estates Park District, said he recently visited the site.

"There's gypsy moths out there," he said. "There's no oak wilt back there."

Schwartz said the Illinois Department of Agriculture sprayed 1,000 acres in the Hoffman Estates area, including the Holzmans' neighborhood, twice in the spring of 2006.

The department later sprayed 3,200 acres that summer, he said.

Schwartz said the village and Dartmoor Homes are going to work together to correct the problem.

Dartmoor officials pay Urban Forest Management, a Fox River Grove-based consulting firm, to manage the land.

Chuck Stewart, a certified forester and co-owner of the firm, said he was monitoring the area but didn't believe the moth problem to be too serious yet.

Stewart said he planned to visit the trees near Holzman's home soon. He noted his firm has fielded noticeably more calls this year for fighting gypsy moths than in the past.

He said insect populations tend to be cyclical and that a mild winter could have aided the population. Stewart also believes last summer's dry spell disrupted growth of a key fungus that acts as a natural predator for the caterpillars.

"It's an insect you can't eradicate. It's an insect that you just try to manage within reasonable budget constraints to minimize the impact on vegetation," Stewart said. "For whatever reason, they seem to get bigger quicker. We're planning now for areas we're going to spray next year."

Holzman hopes the moths don't kill her trees because it could cost money to remove them.

"It's awful to see an oak that took so long to grow be dead in a couple of years," she said.