The forest at Great Smoky Mountains National Park is sick, infected by invasive bugs and plants. Matt Moore, Kaleb Lique Naitove and Emily Baird of the National Park Service are some of the field medics trying to keep it alive.
Springfield, Vt. — An invasive pest with a nasty habit of killing trees has established a toehold in the Upper Valley, and could bring devastation to the area’s forests in coming years, wildlife officials say.
Forest scientists have found an unexpected 'silver lining' to the insect outbreaks that have ravaged millions of trees across western North America.
While insect outbreaks leave trees looking like matchsticks, a new University of Vermont-led study finds these hungry critters significantly reduce wildfire severity.
The findings contrast sharply with popular attitudes --...
As the 2015-2016 hemlock woolly adelgid survey season got under way there was some concern for the condition of hemlock trees in southern Vermont. The preceding growing season included a period of sinificant drought. Trees on ledgy sites were showing signs of stress. Elongate hemlock scale had been found in the area, sometimes coexisting with HWA. As the winter wore on, temperatures were mild...
This winter has been the warmest on record in much of New England. And while many people enjoyed the T-shirt weather, it made Claire E. Rutledge, a researcher with Connecticut’s Agricultural Experiment Station, more concerned about what next season may hold.
Beginning in April, she will head to Wharton Brook and other state lands, setting traps for the southern pine beetle and checking...
Two years ago, in May 2014, the N.H. Division of Forests and Lands released parasitic wasps at three sites in Concord and Canterbury in an attempt to control emerald ash borer (EAB) populations with natural predators (read more about the project here). Bill Davidson and Kyle...
The balsam woolly adelgid is an invasive insect that attacks true firs (Abies, spp) in eastern and western forests. In Vermont, the native balsam fir and a commonly used Christmas tree, Fraser fir, are susceptible. This insect originated in Europe; probably first arriving in the northeast around 1900. It has been reported in Vermont for many years. In 2015, scattered...
There are five challenges that are inhibiting our forests' ability to regenerate successfully and remain a productive land use and a healthy ecosystem: Invasive species, deer, fragmentation, habitat diversity and private owner stewardship.
SHELBURNE CENTER, Massachusetts — It was only a year ago that Norman and Lisa Davenport first noticed sunlight flickering through the once-dense shade of a stand of hemlocks on their hilltop farmland.
And now those first trees look more like utility poles than conifers.
As the twin evils of elongate hemlock scale and hemlock woolly adelgid spread...
The winter of 2014-2015 was tough on hemlock woolly adelgid; 97 to 99 percent of the sistens, or winter, generation died. The previous winter had similar winter mortality rates. This helped to give hemlock trees a bit of a reprieve. But, while these recent mortality rates have been high enough to temporarily stop the spread of HWA, the trees are still...
Vic Bogosian has an 18,000-strong army--or, rather, air-force--of wasps, and he's looking for more draftees. They're fighting an enemy of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, the emerald ash borer, an invasive species from China that has been wiping out an important part of Michigan's Native American culture, the ash tree.
Mattapoisett — In 2013, at least 1,000 European flies were released into Nasketucket Bay State Reservation with the hopes that they would spread throughout the area. Awesome, right?
It may not sound like good news, but these flies have a very specific job to do: take down the winter moth population.
In 2001, ash trees began dying in Detroit, and no one could say why. Then glittering green beetles were discovered crawling out of an ash log.
American scientists had never seen the beetles, and they reached out to experts around the world for help. A Slovakian entomologist named Eduard Jendek solved the mystery: Detroit’s ash trees were being killed by Agrilus planipennis, the emerald...
