To help quantify the impact of stinks bugs, mostly the green stink bug, Acrosternum hilare (Say), on cotton in North Carolina, a series of small plot and large-scale evaluations of stink bug damage to bolls was taken from 1992 through 1999. In the 8 small plot evaluations, stink bug-damaged bolls averaged 2.04% in the unprotected Bollgard and 0.36% in the pyrethroid-treated conventional plots, or a 5.7-fold greater level of boll damage in the Bollgard plots. In a state-wide survey of stink bug damage to bolls, undertaken from 1989 to 1195 (n =1620 cotton fields) stink bug injury on conventional cotton ranged from 0.20% to 1.17% , with a mean of 0.56%, while boll damage in Cleveland County, a county of limited insecticide use (similar to that required for Bollgard cotton), ranged from 1.67% to 8.50%, with a mean of 3.86%. In a 1996 through 1999 large-scale evaluation of 366 pairs of Bollgard and conventional cotton fields managed by cotton producers, the Bollgard cotton fields averaged 2.60% boll damage and 0.74 insecticide applications, while the conventional cotton fields averaged 0.61% boll damage and 2.53 insecticide treatments. Thus, the Bollgard fields showed approx. a 4.3-fold higher level of stink bug damage, and the conventional cotton required 3.4 times the number of insecticide treatments, primarily for bollworm control. Seventeen untreated Bollgard varieties showed a wide range of boll damage from stink bugs (1% to 20%) in a small plot replicated trial, although no correlation was found between maturity and boll damage.