Crews are putting up 950 bright-green traps in Whatcom County as part of an annual effort to keep a non-native pest from taking hold in Washington state, where it could destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of trees.

Nearly 24,000 small cardboard traps have been put up in the state's 39 counties to trap European and Asian gypsy moths, which, in their caterpillar forms, are voracious eaters of foliage.

"They're very aggressive defoliators. They eat an awful lot of leaf material during their larval stage," said Jim Marra, managing entomologist for the state Department of Agriculture.

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