American Forest Entomology comes on stage: bark beetle depredations in the Black Hills Forest Reserve, 1897-1907

Events in American forestry at the end of the last century resulted in the establishment of the first forest reserves in the United States. In 1898, afield party in the Black Hills Reserve discovered extensive areas of ponderosa pine trees killed by an unknown bark beetle. This anecdotal account describes the subsequent visit to the Hills in 1901 by Andrew D. Hopkins, a self-trained entomologist from West Virginia, to investigate the cause of these bark beetle "depredations. "Afterward, he described and named the beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae), which is still important in forestry. The outbreak led to the creation in 1902 of the Division of Forest Insect Investigations, USDA, headed by Hopkins, who assigned Jesse Webb, the first American-trained forest entomologist, to study the beetle, thereby ushering in the discipline of forest entomology in this country.