I belong to a volunteer Adirondack trail crew. Each of our four trailmasters can out-rock bar any of the rest of us, but one has truly rare woods skills. He can find beer he’s buried all over the woods, below the frost line, months after stashing it. Trailmaster Sam has a little of the gift poet David Wagoner described: "No two trees are the same to the Raven/ No two branches are the same to the Wren."
What would it be like to understand the woods so deeply?
I’m guessing it would be an unpleasantly overwhelming sensory experience. I know that, increasingly, it would be heartbreaking, as changes we humans are responsible for overtake our forest communities.
Among those changes are the introduction of three non-native insect pests that threaten the woods we know in the Northeast. Hemlock wooly adelgid, which a few dedicated volunteers in our area are tracking, was recently discovered in a sixth Vermont community. The adelgid probably arrived in North America on infested plant nursery stock.
Wood packing crates (the kinds of boxes our myriad of purchases from China are shipped in) are the culprits in two other introductions. Asian longhorned beetle, a native of eastern Asia, feeds on many common forest trees, including sugar and other maples, birches, elms, ashes, and poplars. The grub-like larvae bore into the tree, gradually disabling its nutrient transport system and eventually causing it to die.
Last year it was found in the Worcester, Mass., region, 60 miles south of the Vermont border. More than 26,000 infested trees in the area have been cut down and ground, chipped, or burned since.
The emerald ash borer, also native to eastern Asia, has been identified as the cause of the death of millions of ash trees in Midwestern and mid-Atlantic states and in Canada. Like the Asian longhorned beetle, the larvae of the borer excavate tunnels inside the tree, and eventually cut off the movement of water and food to the leaves and roots. Emerald ash borer was recently discovered in Chambly, Quebec, less than 40 miles north of the Vermont border.
Wood packing material imported to the U.S. must now be certified heat-treated or fumigated. And many states and localities have instituted quarantines or adopted regulations on the transport of firewood. (New York, for example, prohibits the transport of untreated firewood more than 50 miles from its site of origin.) But even if it’s nearly as challenging as finding beer buried in the woods, early detection is key to stopping the spread of these destructive pests and the changes they’ll bring to our forests.
Folks can delve more into the beetle and the borer at a workshop to be held Wednesday, July 15, at the New England Tropical Conservatory’s education building (on Route 7 in Bennington, 1.3 miles south of the Four Corners), from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The workshop will teach participants how to identify Asian longhorned beetle and emerald ash borer and the tree species they target, how to recognize the signs and symptoms of infestation, and what to do if a possible infestation is found.
The workshop, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Bennington County Sustainable Forest Consortium, the New England Tropical Conservatory, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, and the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
For more information or to register, contact me at 802 442-2275 or . Pre-registration by July 13 is requested.
Shelly Stiles is the district manager for the Bennington County Conservation District, whose mission is promoting rural livelihoods and protecting natural resources in southwestern Vermont. Web site at www.bccdvt.org
This column appeared in the Bennington Banner in July 2009, as one of the BCCD's Conservation Currents pieces, a bi-weekly feature written by BCCD board and staff members since August 2006.