Volunteers on look out for invasive beetles

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(Host) Two insect pests with a voracious appetite for hardwood trees have been found near Vermont’s borders.

The Asian Long Horned Beetle and the Emerald Ash Borer are invasive species. And both bugs have the potential to devastate New England forests.

So, state agencies are training volunteers to look for early signs of infestation.

VPR’s John Dillon has more:

(Dillon) Amanda Priestly leads a group of volunteers to a spindly looking maple tree near South Burlington high school.

(Priestly) "So this is the first one, and it’s always good to kind of step back from the trees and look at how they look compared to the trees surrounding them."

(Dillon) This tree is not infested with the Asian Long Horned Beetle. But it’s a hurting maple; the top part, or crown, is thinning. Dead branches show through the yellowing leaves.

Priestly – who is an outreach specialist with the Agency of Agriculture – wants the public to be aware of what a sick tree looks like.

She’s leading about ten people on the first of several workshops on how to look out for the insect pests.

(Priestly) "Examine as far up as you can. There’s also bark-splitting up there. And from there, you would look for exit holes, you would look for sawdust at the base. Hopefully you wouldn’t find a beetle, but if there was a beetle, maybe that would be close by."

(Dillon) The Asian Long Horned Beetle is believed to have hitched a ride from its native China to the U.S. in wooden shipping pallets. It was found in Brooklyn in 1996, and spotted in Chicago two years later. And last year, a huge infestation was discovered in Worcester, Massachusetts, just 60 miles south of Vermont.

The first outbreaks were in urban environments where diseased trees were more easily seen.

North American hardwoods have no natural resistance to the shiny black beetles. So Vermont’s signature maple trees could be devastated if the bugs took hold here.

Christine Hammer has signed up to be on the front line of the bug battle. The Essex resident recently completed a master gardener class, and is now learning more about the invasive beetles.

(Hammer) "It’s our communities, it’s our neighborhoods, it’s our yards and I think it’s important that regular people become informed because that’s really where the control will come."

(Dillon) The emerald ash borer is a more selective pest than the Asian Long Horned Beetle, but it’s done considerable damage in just a few years.

The emerald ash borer has killed about 40 million ash trees in the Midwest, and the shiny green insect was recently detected near Buffalo, New York. It’s also been found in Quebec, about 30 miles from the Vermont border.

Both bugs have been spread by people moving firewood from infected areas. So the state parks and the national Forest Service have placed restrictions on using firewood that comes from out of the area.

For VPR News, I’m John Dillon in South Burlington.

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