Texas Fauna Project

Southern Pine Bark Beetle

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Craig Rudolph worked as a research ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, out of its Southern Research Station, based in Nacogdoches. During his tenure there, he saw fast-moving outbreaks of Southern pine bark beetles in the east Texas woods, and witnessed the controversies over how best to respond to the beetle attacks. The principal pine now commercially planted in those forests, the loblolly, is especially vulnerable to the beetle. To add to the complex situation, the beetle is both a key food source for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, and a threat to its nesting trees.