Alva Review-Courier -

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana and Arkansas have stepped up boll weevil trapping because two of the destructive, long-snouted beetles were found in northern Mississippi.

"We run scared about getting them reintroduced into the state," said Gus Lorenz, a University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service entomologist and one of the state's three boll weevil experts. "We're going to do everything we can to avoid that as much as possible."

Boll weevil larvae eat cotton buds and flowers. They have cost the cotton industry more than $23 billion since moving into the United States from Mexico in the...