The Asian Invasion: Beetle Mania

So, the Long Horned Beetles are here from Asia.

Much like a movie, the Feds have declared a quarantine and moved in and set up camp.
They will be here for at least 5 years and more will be arriving daily.

I have been rolling this around in my head for the last few days and it feels like a twist on cancer.
We need to kill the trees to save the forest, we don't know how far it has spread, and we know that the treatment will not just hurt but actually kill.
Unlike cancer this is very communicable and it is unethical and immoral for us not to dive in and begin this killing treatment as soon as we possibly can.
So we wait for the frost to descend.

It is a hard thing, and there really isn't a chance to sit around and adjust to this new status.

Anyone who took comfort from it being "only" in Greendale needs a wake up call.
Greendale was where it was first noticed.
The ring expands all the time.
Expect lots, if not all, of Central Massachusetts to be in the quarantine before we are done.
We are just now starting to look, not finishing.


Positively, in 1898 Worcester was celebrating a milestone birthday as a City. They went around and photographed everything. And the landscape that they photographed was bare fields and hills with nothing but grasses and mud. Worcester was deforested.

But look harder at those photos and you see something else.
Seedlings, and saplings, tied to poles, strung up in tripods sitting along every street.
Hope and expectation.
This forest we enjoy by in large wasn't.
It will recover from what we must do, but it will need our help.

And this time we won't plant Norway Maples and Ailanthus! (Crazy Invasive Trees)

GWLT will need volunteers to survey the woods and mark trees that have beetles.
Many many folks need to be drafted to this effort.
Yeah, that means you.

Email anne@gwlt.org and tell her you are ready, willing, and able to help with Beetle Mania.


Presently it is 8:00 am,
the temperature is 55.4 degrees F and rising,
the humidity is 80% and falling,
the pressure is 30.03" Hg and steady,
and the USFS fire danger is LOW.