Locust (42 page)

The Rocky Mountain locust was inadvertently driven to extinction. The most spectacular “success” in the history of economic entomology—the only complete elimination of an agricultural pest species—was the result of unplanned, uncoordinated, and unintentional human activity. The agriculturalists who arrived in the river valleys of the West managed to drive their most severe competitor to extinction in a matter of a few years, leaving North America the only inhabited continent without a locust species. The capacity of the human species to destroy other life forms has not been necessarily, or perhaps even usually, a matter of intentional or wanton disregard for nature. But, one might wonder, at what point does our species become morally culpable for its actions? When can we no longer appeal to being big, dumb, clumsy beasts bulling our way through yet another display of fine, living porcelain in nature’s china shop?

 

There is a final, ironic connection between the bygone days when the Rocky Mountain locust descended on the pioneers, consuming the hard-earned fruits of their labor to fuel the life of the swarm, and modern times, when industrial agriculture descends upon the land, consuming vast quantities of oil to fuel our system of food production: The discovery of grasshopper bodies surfacing in glaciers was made possible by the rapid melting of these ice fields. Global warming is releasing the locusts from their icy graves. A century ago, human alterations of ecosystems caused the demise of the Rocky Mountain locust. And today, the ghosts of these insects warn us of an even more serious threat to the natural world. As our current environmental crisis exposes our past act of destruction—and as it threatens human populations squeezed into our favored habitats of seaboards, riverbanks,
and desert margins—one can only wonder what else we might learn from the Rocky Mountain locust.

 

Away from the rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the thundering falls and thronging tourists give way to murmuring breezes and teeming grasshoppers. Visitors come to Yellowstone National Park to see the fiery underworld: steaming fumaroles, seething mud pots, and roaring geysers. I had come to find an aspect of nature far more rare and ephemeral, a spark of life that had not flamed for a hundred years. I sought the last vestige of the Rocky Mountain locust.

The U.S. Congress designated Yellowstone as the country’s first national park in 1872. The Yellowstone Act called for the preservation of the watershed of the Yellowstone River “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” The marvel of Yellowstone was its fifty-mile-wide crater and the thousands of geothermal features scattered across the landscape. Six hundred thousand years ago an eruption spewed 200 cubic miles of ash across the continent (a volume 300 times that ejected by Mount St. Helens in 1980). Little did Congress know that Yellowstone was still erupting with explosions of life, spreading locusts over an area larger than that encompassed by the largest volcanic eruption in the continent’s history.

Yellowstone National Park was intended to preserve a special place for humans, but it also protected the sanctuary of the Rocky Mountain locust. Within two years of the park’s formation, immense swarms of locusts descended upon the pioneer farmers of the Great Plains. And within a decade, Charles Valentine Riley would gain the first inkling that these spectacular river valleys of the montane West were the source of the locust. By then, however, Yellowstone was protected from the ecological ravages of farming, and the last haunts of the Rocky Mountain locust were left intact.

I’ve taken several ventures into the park hoping to discover the long-lost locust. But I wonder: What if I found a pocket of habitat still harboring these once glorious creatures? Regulatory officials might well advocate their destruction, as the potential for a return to the swarms of the 1800s would be a possibility. Even the vaunted Endangered Species Act exempts pests from protection, so perhaps this remnant population would be accorded the same status as the last vial of smallpox. However,
in my fantasy scenario, I like to imagine that in an ironic twist, economic entomologists would hasten to point out that
pest
is a label that can be applied only under appropriate conditions of population density. Surely, they would argue, a population of Rocky Mountain locusts that had not bothered us for a century could hardly be termed a pest.

From the environmental camp, a few voices might call for protecting these insects as important components of a native ecosystem that is struggling to sustain biotic integrity. Advocates could invoke the powerful place of this species in the story of the nation and the folklore of America. There might be some appeals based on the Rocky Mountain locust’s capacity to serve as a reminder that we must share this world with other species, even those that we have not tamed or controlled. Along with hurricanes and drought, such creatures serve to remind the industrial world that humility is still necessary.

But in the end, would our decision be any different from that of the loggers in Amazonia or that of the early pioneers, had they realized that their nemesis had finally been reduced to a single locale? If we struggle so mightily with whether we should save the last bits of old-growth forest and the few untrammeled tracts of the Arctic, what hope would a locust have? What have we really learned about ourselves and our place in the natural world?

 

Among the grasshoppers that I have collected in Yellowstone National Park, I remember one female with spectacularly long wings. Of course females are very difficult to identify, but she was officially recorded as
Melanoplus bruneri,
the closest living relative of
Melanoplus spretus
. I may have been wrong in my classification of that long-winged female, but mistaken identities are sometimes a saving grace for individuals whose existence may not be welcomed. Recently, I captured several similar individuals from a meadow in the park. They also appeared to be
M. bruneri,
although they lacked the distinctive yellow coloration on the underside that typifies this species. I think that I know who they were, so I released them back into the field. Because I did not remove them from the park, their identities and location need not be reported to the authorities.

There are innumerable accounts of the trials and tribulations of western pioneers, many of which make at least some reference to the hardships wrought by locusts (along with disease, hunger, loneliness, cold, drought, fire, etc.). The stories include both autobiographical journals and fictionalized tales. A couple of the best first-person accounts are
Old Rail Fence Corners: Frontier Tales told by Minnesota Pioneers,
edited by Lucy Leavenworth Wilder Morris, and
Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866,
by Mollie D. Sanford. For sheer readability and cultural relevance, however, nothing beats Laura Ingalls Wilder’s
Little House
series. Among the fictionalized accounts, the most popular contemporary work is Larry McMurtry’s
Lonesome Dove
. However, perhaps the writings more relevant to the times and places of the Rocky Mountain locust are works such as Willa Cather’s
O Pioneers!,
Maud Hart Lovelace and Delos Lovelace’s
Gentleman from England,
and Ole Rolvaag’s
Giants in the Earth.
There are few scholarly works that directly address the ways in which locusts impacted the lives of the settlers, but perhaps the best such study is Harold E. Briggs’s “Grasshopper Plagues and Early Dakota Agriculture, 1864-1876”(
Agricultural History
1934, 8:51-63).

The best firsthand accounts of swarms of the Rocky Mountain locust are embedded within the U.S. Entomological Commission’s first two reports
issued by the Government Printing Office:
First Annual Report of the United States Entomological Commission for the Year 1877 Relating to the Rocky Mountain Locust
and
Second Report of the United States Entomological Commission for the Years 1878 and 1879 Relating to the Rocky Mountain Locust and Western Cricket
. These reports are still reasonably available through antiquarian book dealers. However, the best synthesis of the Rocky Mountain locust’s biology is Charles V. Riley’s
The Locust Plague in the United States
(1877), but this small treatise is much more difficult to find. There are several sources of information on locust biology and ecology. Perhaps the most readable account is Stanley Baron’s
The Desert Locust,
which recounts the massive control programs in Africa in the mid-twentieth century. More technical overviews of grasshopper and locust biology include
Biology of Grasshoppers,
edited by R. F. Chap-man and Anthony Joern, and
The Bionomics of Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Their Kin,
edited by S. K. Gangwere, M. C. Muralirangan, and Meera Muralirangan.

One of the strangest and most fascinating books on legal history ever written is E. P. Evan’s
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals,
which not only explores the relationship between human laws and animal actions but also reveals profound moral and religious dilemmas in terms of our relationship to the natural world. There are many sources of information on the history of Mormonism, and these books frequently make reference to the role of the Rocky Mountain locust—and, of course, the Mormon cricket—in the story of the Latter Day Saints. A couple of the more readable, but rather contentious, accounts are
One Nation under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church,
by Richard Abanes, and
The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail,
by Wallace Earle Stegner. For a Mormon’s-eye view of Mormonism, including some interesting references to the role of the locusts in the early days of the Utah settlers, it’s worth checking out the
Meridian Magazine
Web site (
meridianmagazine.com
). The Web site
historytogo.utah.gov
also has some good information about the Mormon settlers and their insect adversaries. And of course, a reading of the Bible’s book of Exodus is sure to set the proper context for an appreciation of Western culture’s interpretation of locusts.

The best descriptions of the methods used to control the Rocky Mountain locust are found in the U.S. Entomological Commission’s reports and various USDA bulletins, such as C. V. Riley’s 1891
Destructive Locusts
(USDA Division of Entomology Bulletin No. 25). These documents are difficult to find, and somewhat more accessible accounts from the early part of the twentieth century describe methods similar to those of the late 1800s. In this regard, A. Gibson’s,
The Control of Locusts in Eastern Canada
(Canada Department of Agriculture, Entomology Branch, Circular 5, 1915) is an excellent source, as is C. R. Jones’s,
Grasshoppers
(Office of State Entomologist, Circular 13, Fort Collins, Colorado, 1914), which has what appear to be the only photographs of the early locust/grasshopper-catching devices in actual use. A more general and accessible historical source for information on insect pest management is Robert A. Wardle and Philip Buckle’s
The Principles of Insect Control
(1923). Modern descriptions of locust and grasshopper management methods (many of which can be traced to the work of Riley et al.) include
Biological Control of Locusts and Grasshoppers
(edited by C. J. Lomer and C. Prior, 1992);
New Strategies in Locust Control
(edited by S. Krall, R. Peveling, and D. Ba Diallo, 1997); and
Grasshoppers and Grassland Health
(edited by J. A. Lockwood, A. V. Latchininsky, and M. G. Sergeev, 2000).

Without a doubt, the most thorough and interesting historical review of the sociopolitical repercussions of the Rocky Mountain locust can be found in Annette Atkins’s
Harvest of Grief: Grasshopper Plagues and Public Assistance in Minnesota, 1873-78
. Her work and interpretations contributed immensely to my own ideas concerning the place of the locust in American history and culture. For readers with a penchant for historical sleuthing, absolutely fascinating discussions of how politicians perceived the locust and the proper role of government can be found in the
Congressional Record,
especially the second session of the Forty-third Congress (December 1874 through February 1875), the first session of the Forty-fourth Congress (May 1876), and the first session of the Seventy-second Congress (June 1932). The text of the letters from General Ord and Major Dudley can be found in the Senate’s record of the second
session of Forty-third Congress (Executive Document No. 5, “Ravages of Grasshoppers”). And the dramatic accounting of the military food and stores provided to the settlers can be found in the House of Representatives’ record of the first session of the Forty-fourth Congress (Executive Document No. 28, “Relief of Grasshopper Sufferers”). To see what the federal government has been doing in regard to grasshopper control in recent years, check out the USDA’s Web site at
sidney.ars.usda.gov/grasshopper/
.

Although there is no definitive and complete biography of Charles Valentine Riley, his story is told in various places. A series of articles have appeared in the
American Entomologist,
including “Darwin, Walsh, and Riley: The Entomological Link” (G. Kritksy, summer 1995) and “Charles Valentine Riley: The Making of the Man and His Achievements” (E. H. Smith and J. R. Smith, winter 1996). The Entomological Society of America’s 1991 compendium,
Progress and Perspectives for the 21st century
(edited by J. J. Menn and A. L. Steinhauer) includes a chapter, “A Tribute to Charles Valentine Riley: American Entomologist,” by L. V. Knutson. A biography published more closely in time to Riley’s life was written by F. G. Summers (vol. 19, no. 4, 1925) in the
Missouri Historical Review
and was titled “Charles V. Riley, Benefactor of Agriculture.” The most compelling firsthand insights into Riley’s character come from the autobiographical retrospective of his assistant (and successor) Leland O. Howard in
Fighting the Insects: The Story of an Entomologist
(1933). Howard also included many intriguing perspectives on the early days of economic entomology and the personality of Riley in
A History of Applied Entomology
(Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 84, 1930).