A brigade of more than 700,000 ladybugs has invaded a neighborhood in Schaumburg, marching up tree trunks, down flower stems and through residents’ front yards.
It may sound like a script from a bad 1950s B-movie, but this infestation is an environmentally safe experiment introduced by the Schaumburg Public Works Department. The tiny armor-suited troops are being enlisted to wipe out a host of pests that snack on trees, flowers and other vegetation.
A war has been declared on pests and weeds that deface neighborhoods, park districts and public grounds in the Chicago area. But instead of the traditional chemical sprayings, the innovative new weapons that public groundskeepers are starting to use include ladybugs, fungi, chicken compost, seashells and even small-scale versions of biological warfare.
Whether it’s because of pressure from chemically sensitive residents or just an attempt to become “environmentally correct,” many communities-including Schaumburg, Highland Park, Lake Forest, Palatine and Chicago-are opting for natural methods to preserve their out-door assets.
And in the case of the Schaumburg experiment, it’s a change many residents welcome. Insects “have eaten the leaves on my bushes and my front tree,” said Bonnie Bennett, who lives in the area where the ladybugs were released. “It sounds funny to use ladybugs to solve the problem, but whatever works.”
Schaumburg’s ladybug battalion was launched two weeks ago in the Cutters Mill area to battle the aphid, an insect that is destroying trees. The 720,000 are the first of about 2 million ladybugs that will be deployed in the area.
Though the mere suggestion of such a scenario is enough to make the flesh crawl, most homeowners hardly know the ladybugs are there. But the use of such methods raises a tricky question: Is it possible to trade one pest for another?
“Once the ladybugs do their thing and get the aphid population down, they don’t stick around. They spread out,” said Stan Smith, plant and pesticide supervisor at the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
“And even if they stick around, they aren’t going to cause any problems. They’re kind of nice,” he said.
Three years ago Schaumburg began studying how it could curtail use of toxic fertilizers and pesticides, after a resident complained she suffered severe allergic reactions to the chemicals.
“There were environmental and health concerns, plus we found out that when you spray for aphids you also kill beneficial insects that help the trees and plants,” said John Providence, the Public Works Department’s maintenance superintendent.
“We eliminated our tree-spraying program and we’re testing natural methods to fertilize and control weeds,” he said, though department officials won’t know until next year whether the ladybugs were successful in wiping out the aphids.
Park officials in Highland Park are using a compound made of seashell particles to control their population of slugs, which suck juices from flowers and multiply during rainy summers. Before discovering the product two years ago, the district resorted to picking off the slimy mollusks by hand.
“We use (the substance) in our rose garden and in some of our flower beds,” said Rick Stumpf, the Park District’s assistant superintendent.
“You dust it on. It feels like a powder to us,” he said, but to the soft-bodied slugs “it’s sharp like glass.” And it’s done the trick.
Like most other communities curbing their use of chemical pesticides, the Chicago Park District operates under a system called integrated pest management. The system requires the district to use alternative forms of pesticides and fertilizers on its 7,000 acres and only use toxic chemicals as a last resort.
“Instead of doing routine spraying, we monitor (trees and flowers) and treat them only when necessary,” said Ron Nemchausky, general foreman of the district’s landscape management division. “This is a good system for us because of the excessive cost and the environmental impact of spraying.”
Under Palatine Park District’s management system, landscapers have switched from chemical fertilizers to a procedure that requires them to punch holes in the turf. The procedure is designed to promote healthy lawns by aerating the soil.
“We’re taking more of an environmentalist view concerning our parks because there were so many people who were always asking us to call them when we sprayed there,” said Pat Moser, Palatine’s assistant parks superintendent.
Thirty years after the public learned about the harmful effects of the pesticide DDT (dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane) on birds, waterways and humans, the use of nontoxic methods of controlling pests is beginning to grow, environmentalists say.
“I see more communities and school districts looking at pesticide use and questioning the need in light of the availability of nonchemical alternative methods of pest control,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides.
“This is very different from a chemical approach, which stresses eradication” of pests and weeds, he said. “The nonchemical approach says there is a threshold of pests we can live with. The purpose is to bring the pest population to that acceptable threshold.”
However, there are signs that the pesticide industry is fighting back. For instance, the industry has pressed legislatures in states including Indiana, Kansas, Texas and Illinois into passing bills limiting local governments’ authority to regulate pesticide use.
The Illinois measure, if signed into law by Gov. Jim Edgar, would nullify local ordinances in communities such as Aurora and Oak Park that require pesticide companies to notify neighbors when private homeowners have their trees or shrubs sprayed.
The legislation would only affect ordinances involving private homeowners and would not restrict a municipality’s right to limit pesticide use on public property.
Pesticide companies “are fighting everything we try,” said Mary Ross, pollution issues coordinator for the Sierra Club. The legislation “is their way of flexing their muscles and saying environmentalists won’t take over the world.”
In what could be considered the insect equivalent of biological warfare, many public pest-control workers are turning to a bacteria found in soil to kill caterpillars, gypsy moths and even mosquitoes.
Unlike toxic pesticides, officials say, the new organic formulas won’t pollute, won’t linger in the environment and won’t harm anything other than their intended victims.
“It just kills mosquitoes and black flies by destroying their intestines,” said Khian Liem, director and medical entomologist at the South Cook County Mosquito Abatement District in Harvey.
“It’s a very, very safe chemical,” he said.
Dan Reeves, city forester in Lake Forest, said similar bacteria used for gypsy moths and caterpillars “makes them sick with a bacterial infection like pneumonia and they don’t recover from it.”
For some communities, an application of anything, organic or not, is not safe enough. For them, going natural means using nothing.
“We’re real conservative. We believe putting nothing down is better than putting down something that is naturally occuring,” said Patrick Morley, manager of park operations in Elmhurst, which refrains from treatment unless absolutely necessary.
“Some people are allergic to pollen and others are allergic to grass,” he said. “Just because something is natural or organic doesn’t mean that someone won’t be allergic to it.”
And in Oak Park, natural and organic pesticides “are taboo,” said Gerry Gorecki, shop supervisor in the village’s Park District. “We hire college kids who do nothing but sit on their butts for eight hours picking weeds. It’s not the most efficient method, but it’s probably the safest.”
With the organic movement, though, park officials and environmentalists warn that homeowners should be prepared, like the Oak Park workers, to use manual methods if they want to maintain perfect, weed-free lawns.
“Unfortunately, at this point there are no biological control methods for weeds available,” said Stumpf of Highland Park.
“Some people who live adjacent to the parks complain that they spend the money to maintain their property at a certain level and they don’t want weeds encroaching on it,” Stumpf said. “We tell them the tradeoff is that it will minimize the use of toxins and will save taxpayers money.”
