Western Trees dying from beetles etc?

[Sailorsam]

Alaska trees suffering

https://www.alaskapublic.org/2018/08...sect-outbreak/

***The U.S. Forest Service started getting a lot of calls about yellowish trees on hillsides in Southeast Alaska this month. The color is from dying hemlock leaves, which were damaged by an insect. So, they got their experts to look into it.

Elizabeth Graham is an entomologist who works with the Forest Service in Juneau in a division called Forest Health Protection. And she’s really into bugs.

“This year has just been extraordinary to see the amount of activity,” Graham said. “They are just so cool; the things that insects can do.”***

they're saying this is normal.

"Graham and other scientists have flown aerial surveys and taken samples on several islands—Mitkof, Kupreanof, Prince of Wales and Admiralty. They did see a sawfly infestation. But they’re not that concerned. The main reason is because sawflies are native to the region. So, they’re part of the normal ecosystem."

whew.

[Sailorsam]

I know Connecticut is not 'west' but...

http://www.courant.com/news/connecti...820-story.html

***Millions of aging trees across Connecticut are dead or dying as a result of years of drought, invasive insects and major storms, experts warn, creating an increased public risk from trees falling on roads, homes, sidewalks, parks and forest trails.

State and local officials and private tree-care companies are scrambling to remove huge numbers of dead or damaged trees that are considered the most likely to put the public in danger. Some homeowners are being forced to wait for weeks to get a tree on their property taken down.

“In the next year or two, it’s going to be very scary driving along some of these roads,” said Jeff Ward, chief scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He said there are “probably tens of thousands of roadside trees” that are now damaged dead or dying and leaning over roadways and at risk to collapse.***

wonder how many other places in this situation.

anyone up there with a local report???

[GTOGreg]

Beetles may be a symptom, not the cause. His name probably appears somewhere in this thread as he's so prolific, but if not check out Dane Wiggington at geoengineeringwatch.com. He discusses, er evangelizes, aerial fallout from aerosol injection of alum, barium, and strontium...as used for reflection of UVA, UVB radiation from our sun. However, it may be helping to generate (rather, allow) very dangerous UVC! Most will tell you the sun "feels" hotter on their skin the last couple of years. It probably is. Anyway, he posits this is what is killing our trees and beneficial insects. They can't survive in that level of heat and it is destroying whole ecologies. Further it (the fallout) is also acting as an accelerant on the leaves and causing wildfires to burn "faster and hotter and more unpredictably" than ever before (heard this from the wild-fire fighters recently?). This is one problem, the bigger problem is that it feeds a negative feedback loop that releases more fuel for CO production and ergo more heat and less ozone. Are they putting a bandaid on the wound to buy time or are they purposely trying to move us out of certain areas? The later sounds crazy until you look at some of the "steering" behaviors of both fires and storms. There's a whole science behind it and it has been in the works the last half century. Setting the conditions is something they've been able to do for decades. Steering and dispersing them with high frequency radio waves is a newer phenomenon. Or so they say... Sounds plausible but I'm not a scientist.

[Sailorsam]

Hemlock Wooly Adelgid is killing trees; Michigan is quarantining

https://www.hollandsentinel.com/news...gid-quarantine

“If HWA continues to spread in Michigan, it could cause significant losses to the state’s forest and tourism industries,” said Gina Alessandri, MDARD’s Pesticide and Plant Pest Management Division Director. “This quarantine will keep the pest from moving into new areas of the state and slow the spread within the four already affected counties.”

[Sailorsam]

phys.org site article on Western forests

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-climat...es-deadly.html

***
Severe drought, insect infestation and poor forest management have combined in recent years to kill millions of trees in the American West—130 million in California alone—and provide fuel for huge wildfires.

The crisis is all the more alarming as hundreds of millions of hectares of land were scorched this summer out west in several states, causing a dozen or so deaths.

Last Thursday, for instance, the government agency in charge of overseeing firefighting in forests said no fewer than 71 wildfires were burning.

And things could get worse. Early this year experts warned of the risk of a new, potentially much more dangerous kind of forest fire.

They blame the rampant mortality of trees, mainly conifers, which has ravaged forests as a result of drought and beetle infestation.

In the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, some forests have lost 90 percent of their trees, prompting authorities to declare a state of emergency.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-climat...ly.html#jCp***

Saturday night football game @ Wyoming. they were talking air quality warnings. some of the fans had dust masks from the local fires. oy.

any local experience?

[InfScout]

Originally Posted by Sailorsam

I know Connecticut is not 'west' but...

http://www.courant.com/news/connecti...820-story.html

***Millions of aging trees across Connecticut are dead or dying as a result of years of drought, invasive insects and major storms, experts warn, creating an increased public risk from trees falling on roads, homes, sidewalks, parks and forest trails.

State and local officials and private tree-care companies are scrambling to remove huge numbers of dead or damaged trees that are considered the most likely to put the public in danger. Some homeowners are being forced to wait for weeks to get a tree on their property taken down.

“In the next year or two, it’s going to be very scary driving along some of these roads,” said Jeff Ward, chief scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He said there are “probably tens of thousands of roadside trees” that are now damaged dead or dying and leaning over roadways and at risk to collapse.***

wonder how many other places in this situation.

anyone up there with a local report???

Well my parents had a long treeline of some sort of pine trees. I don't recall the type of pine or what infested it. But they lost a lot of that treeline. We simply have a carpenter ant infested one. Nice old maple tree. It going to be cut down.

A friend of mine has this long driveway and beautiful oaks planted on each side. Long perfect row of them- evenly spaced on both sides of the drive. He lost four of them but I don't know why. He complains he won't be alive to see the new ones grow up. I know what he means. That long driveway was beautiful in the summer. Even the horses liked being ridden along that.

[Sailorsam]

Delaware (obviously not West but...) meets the Emerald Ash Borer

https://www.delawarepublic.org/post/...wn-and-seaford

***Braunskill says because the weather is getting colder, the Emerald Ash Borer is currently over-wintering in Ash trees, so it’s not actively feeding on them. But come spring, the larvae will feed just on the underside of the bark, working its way through the vascular system of the tree and eventually killing it.

She says if you have ash trees on your property, they should be treated immediately or removed by Spring to control the spread of the invasive insect.

Braunskill says the Emerald Ash Borer has now been found in ALL three Delaware counties. It was first discovered in Kent County in 2016.***

any Delawareans about? check those trees! please don't let these things spread any more

[America's Patriot]

Well, California has the right idea on how to kill the beetles... burn the entire forest down and you kill the beetles.

[Sailorsam]

https://fox6now.com/2018/12/26/burn-...wreaths-trees/

news article warns of invasive species on holiday trees and wreaths

*** Plant health officials are cautioning consumers to burn wreaths and other evergreen decorations, or bag them and put them in the trash, after inspectors found invasive insects on many such items sold at large chain stores in Wisconsin this holiday season.

According to a news release from state officials, inspectors found an insect called “elongate hemlock scale,” or EHS, on wreaths, swags and boughs, and in arrangements of evergreen boughs in hanging baskets, porch pots, mugs and sleighs.***

why can't we have a fun invasive specie like a Panda or a marmoset???

[SgtBooker44]

Originally Posted by Charles Martel

The beetle infestation in many western states (my own included) is the direct result of poor forest management practices. Many western forests depend on fire to periodically clear out dead fall, undergrowth and destroy diseased populations of trees. They also depend on fire for regeneration. Forest fire suppression activities in the west are largely responsible for the widespread decline of pine and spruce forests. Banning the collection of dead and diseased trees has also taken its toll.

To add to this, the forest mis-management has led to trees fighting over the water in the ground. Here we are in December 2018 and 100,000,000 trees are diseased and starting to die. They can't fight the disease without the water. I spoke to an arborist last summer and he heard that California may not have any pine trees in 5 years. Cedar trees can fight the beetle, but not the pines.

[Calgary-John]

We have the pine beetle in the west forests, kills 100’s of Km’s of trees. Reason #1 for massive fires in BC and S.W Alberta

[WilliamAshley]

Originally Posted by Sailorsam

not hearing much about it, but apparently there's a ton of Western forests being lost to beetles etc. mostly the Emerald Ash Borer

http://www.laramieboomerang.com/arti...3345037683.txt


*The epidemic that’s hit local forests is a region-wide phenomenon not limited to the mountain pine beetle or southeast Wyoming.
“Every single one of our major conifers has bark beetles that are affecting them,” Ewers said. “Nearly every place that we have conifers in the West is being hit.”*

disease targets Black Walnut
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20...k-walnut-trees

Emerald Borer in Minnesota
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/dis...ss-week-begins

New Hampshire too
http://www.ledgertranscript.com/home...g-the-outdoors

anyone know much about this? I'm hearing nothing.

This stuff has been in the news for like 20+ years now. It is particularly bad due to climate change where invasive species are able to migrate into areas where they previously were not able to survive in. Warmer seasons have allowed for insects to migrate further than they did in the past.

[Brettny]

The EAB have hit our ash trees hard this year. They burro under the bark.
Im cutting all mine down and making ash flooring from it. Soon ash will be so rare il have a floor worth thousands of dollars.

[Sailorsam]

https://www.cbs19news.com/content/ne...509758601.html

***At Highland, each tree in the treatment program is getting what's called a root flare injection of emamectin benzoate, a chemical that kills the larval form of the emerald ash borer, that stage at which is digs through the fleshy part of the trees cutting off the tree's ability to transport water and nutrients.
Highland's ash trees were first treated in this manner two years ago, and this preventative treatment must be administered every two years.
According to a release, the treatments will continue until the threat of emerald ash borer has passed.***

good job but too labor intensive for wide scale use

[Hammerstrike]

Those darn things have pretty well wiped out ash trees in my area. A guy I work with is still cutting as many as he can in the 5 years I’ve known him in his woods. It’s a shame really. He does burn wood though so it works out somewhat for him and others in our area.

[Sailorsam]

'Spotted Lanternfly' threatens Maryland plants

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/en...pc4-story.html

***"The spotted lanternfly’s U.S. invasion has crossed the border from Pennsylvania into Maryland.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture issued a quarantine Monday in an effort to contain the invasive species in Cecil and Harford counties after the spotted lanternfly was, well, spotted in Cecil’s northeastern corner and along Harford’s northern border."***

never heard of this one
pretty as bugs go

[William Ashley]

Originally Posted by linux99

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-of-extinction

Ash trees have been put on the Endangered Species list. That's 8.9 billion trees forecast to die off in North America.

I am replanting my woods with nut and mast producing trees - Hickory, Oak, Butternut, but it will take a while to replenish.

This is really puts in perspective Justin Trudeau's election pledge to plant 2 Bilion trees, about 50 per Canadian... not sure how many of those 9 bilion trees are in Canada but it seems that the 2 billion tree planting pledge won't even make up for those trees being lost due to invasive species and disease due to global warming.