News On Vermont Invasives

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New Jersey says it has booted the Asian longhorned beetle alert
Friday, March 15, 2013
http://www.dispatch.com/content/blogs/science-environment/2013/03/nj-declares-it...

There is hope, Ohio. Today, New Jersey officials declared that the state is free of Asian longhorned beetles after a 10-year fight.

The Star-Ledger reports: "After more than a decade, we can declare New Jersey is free of this invasive pest," state Secretary of Agriculture Douglas Fisher said at a press conference in Linden, one of four towns in Middlesex and Union counties where...

It takes a village to find the Emerald Ash Borer
Friday, March 1, 2013

Volunteers, state and federal staff team up to survey for EAB

by Caitlin Cusack

Finding an early infestation of the Emerald Ash Borer is much like searching for a needle in a haystack—so many trees, far too many places to hide, such a small insect.  Yet, Johnetta B. Cole reminds us that “Faced with what seems like an...

Middlebury College Students Help Middlebury Plan for EAB
Monday, February 25, 2013

Windshield surveys of urban trees are not for the faint of stomach; at least that’s what students of Tim Parson’s Middlebury College “Trees and the Urban Forest” course discovered while counting Middlebury’s roadside ash population. 

NY and MA to expand EAB quarantine, keep untreated firewood , and EAB, out of VT alert
Monday, February 25, 2013

New York will expand a quarantine on ash wood products across most of the southern part of the state to combat the spread of the invasive emerald ash borer.  This invasive tree and forest pest has killed tens of millions of ash trees in areas where populations have become established.  Costs to communities for removal and disposal of dead, dying and hazardous municipal trees, and...

Mass. creates quarantine zone to contain emerald ash borer alert
Friday, February 22, 2013
Burlington Free Press

BOSTON — Massachusetts officials said Thursday that they’ve ordered a quarantine on certain wood in the state’s westernmost county to help contain an invasive beetle that’s killed millions of ash trees nationwide.

Beginning March 1, no hardwood firewood, ash nursery stock or untreated ash lumber will be allowed outside Berkshire County, where the emerald ash borer was found last summer...

Hunting EAB with synthetic female decoys; even better than the real thing
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Penn State University

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- As the emerald ash borer ravages North American ash trees, threatening the trees' very survival, a team of entomologists and engineers may have found a way to prevent the spread of the pests.

Emerald ash borers (EABs), a type of beetle native to Asia, first appeared in the U.S. about 20 years ago. They are now moving east from Michigan, killing ash trees on the...

New York Emerald Ash Borer Quarantine to be Expanded alert
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Agriculture News

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens and New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (DAM) Commissioner Darrel J. Aubertine today announced that the state will propose a revision to its Emerald ash borer (EAB) quarantine order to include all of the State south of the New York State Thruway, and east to the state border, except for...

Black Ash Basketmakers, Important Partners in Conservation
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

 

 

Windham County infested with invasive insect
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Windham County infested with invasive insect

PUTNEY -- As Forest Protection Forester with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, it is Jim Esden's job to track the spread of the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive insect that feeds on the sap of hemlock trees.

First discovered in Vermont in 2007, the insect has been showing up in greater numbers and was first discovered in Bennington County last year.

...

Sirex detected in Brattleboro alert
Friday, January 11, 2013

Every year USDA-APHIS-PPQ and various state agencies (VT Agency of Agriculutre and VT Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation) set up insect traps to see if any exotic wood borers have taken up residency in Vermont.   Several species of insects are considered “Target Species” or ‘Species of Concern’ including emerald ash borer, Asian longhorned beetle and over 25 more species of...