A billion-dollar bug problem

Pine beetles ravaging Southern trees

From Charles Molineaux (CNN)

The Southern pine beetle outbreak has caused more than $1 billion in damage.

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SPECIAL REPORT A slithering menace | Video Snakeheads revisited | Video Animal enemies: Myth vs. reality | Video Billion dollar bug | Video Gator in the garden | Video Gallery: Critters in Conflict VIDEO Pine beetles are destroying thousands of acres of trees weakened by drought in the U.S. Southeast. CNN's Charles Molineaux reports. (September 26) PLAY VIDEO

FORSYTH COUNTY, Georgia (CNN) -- Ed Taylor's "woodsy" front yard in North Georgia is losing most of its woods.

His pine trees are being devoured by a monster smaller than a grain of rice -- the Southern pine beetle, the most destructive of several beetles chewing their way through forests, back yards and urban parks and causing more than a $1 billion in damage.

Taylor is among a growing number of homeowners forced to pay thousands of dollars to clear out dead and dying trees.

"These trees right in front of us here were green two weeks ago, and now they're not," Taylor explained.

Like a slow-moving forest fire, the beetles have munched their way across the South, devastating an estimated 700,000 acres. They've even traveled far from their usual territory, killing trees in central Florida and in the pine barrens of New Jersey.

Outbreaks occur every few years, but U.S. Forest Service scientist Wes Nettleton said he's never seen anything like the present one, the worst on record and now in its fourth year.

The beetles are native to the Southeast, but a long drought has weakened trees' natural defenses against them. The bugs descend on a pine by the thousands, turning its bark into Swiss cheese. They breed an army of hungry grubs that dig a maze of tunnels, essentially blocking the tree's bloodstream and choking it to death.

"There's basically four ways of controlling Southern pine beetle spots," Nettleton said. "Cut, cut, cut and cut."

This process leaves ragged gaps in national forests, parks, timber plantations and neighborhood thickets.

So when does it end?

Scientists said a few days of 100 degree-plus temperatures or a severe winter cold snap will knock the Southern pine beetles down, and an end to the drought would better fortify the trees.

None of those scenarios looks likely, so scientists said it's up to the beetles' natural enemies -- other beetles, wasps and woodpeckers -- to put an end to the infestation.

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