Mormon crickets' cyclical visit stains roads red in southern Idaho (2024)

The view on the drive to Fairfield from Gooding still includes rolling green hills and a vast blue sky — but the road quickly turns a greasy red as swarms of Mormon crickets cross Idaho Highway 46.

“All you have to do (to see them) is go on a drive,” said Shannon Young, Gooding County’s 4-H coordinator. “The road is red.”

People heading toward Camas County for summer activities or simply going home are experiencing a Mormon cricket massacre. Known as the Anabrus simplex, swarms of the native species emerge nearly every year in southern Idaho and northern Nevada after eggs hatch in early spring. They migrate in large groups to irrigated agricultural land and begin feeding.

“It’s a pretty bad year,” said Nic Zurfluh, invasive species bureau chief with the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. “There are landowners who are experiencing extensive damage and we’re providing a lot of assistance to other areas of the Magic Valley.”

The ISDA’s Grasshopper and Mormon Cricket Program assists the state’s agriculture industry and landowners when outbreaks of grasshoppers and Mormon crickets cause economic damage to their crops. To qualify for assistance, landowners must own or manage at least five acres of agricultural land and meet or exceed the requirement of having three Mormon crickets per square meter or eight grasshoppers per square meter.

The program has received more than 90 requests for aid from Elmore, Cassia and Gooding counties since early June.

The invasion has been destructive.

“We’ve got a three-to four-inch barley sprout coming up and then you’ve got this migration of Mormon crickets on the side of the field or you can start to see damage occur,” Zurfluh said. “And what I mean by damage is a Mormon cricket will entirely strip down a barley plant.”

The ISDA deploys scouts to gauge the severity of the outbreaks between March and May before the Mormon crickets hatch. Mormon crickets lay eggs in dry rangelands during late summer to late fall.

In the 2023 season, the ISDA distributed more than 75,000 pounds of insecticide bait to landowners who qualified for assistance, without any charge, according to an ISDA press release.

Although every cycle varies, neighboring Owyhee County expects them every year in massive amounts.

“Owyhee County has probably been hit the hardest almost every year,” Andy West, University of Idaho horticulture educator for Twin Falls, said. “It’s such a rural county — lots of range land — and so I mean they just have thousands of acres that they just go through.”

Another common location for the Mormon crickets is along U.S. Highway 93, where large numbers of the critters can make the road dangerous.

“I’ve actually seen it some years where the state highway department will come through a snow plow to clean off the roads because of the smashed insects,” West said.

Although the insects collect in masses, they are harmless to humans — they try to jump away when people get close to them.

When Trampas Robinson of Fairfield tried to get a good look at the enormous creatures, they crawled away to find their next meal. Robinson first noticed them jumping on the roads near Fairfield during the first week of June.

“When you’re driving, it feels like running over bubble wrap — like listening to rice krispies snap, crackle, pop, crunch... You name it,” Robinson said.

Since his initial encounter with the Mormon crickets, he’s been collecting them with a butterfly net as feed for his 60 chickens. He also gathers grasshoppers during the season.

“It’s a good source of protein for them — gives them something else — which really helps them through those winter months,” Robinson said.

Mormon crickets made up a portion of diets in native tribes of southern Idaho, eastern Nevada and regions of Utah.

When encountering Mormon crickets, people need to change their perspective.

“These bugs are only an inconvenience to humans so put the human side away for a minute and let the bugs pass,” Robinson said. “The birds, rock chucks — you name it, they eat it.

“Maybe some humans might. You hungry?”