From the March 9, 1994 edition of The New Castle Record
A pest that could infest the entire eastern range of hemlock trees within 30 years has hit Craig County harder than any other place in a 12-state region of Forest land.
According to Forest Health researcher Rusty Rhea, effects of the hemlock woolly adelgid infestation are more severe in Craig County trees than in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, half of Texas and the rest of Virginia.
“It doesn’t look good,” Rhea said. “We don’t have a lot of hope for the hemlocks.”
The adelgid, which ills the host hemlock in an average of two to seven years, weakens the tree by making it more susceptible to damage from other pests and disease.
“It will affect each tree—there’s not any resistance,” he said. “They’re all vulnerable.”
Pesticide treatments will be applied to hemlocks surrounding recreation areas, but there is currently no technology to treat an entire forest, said Rhea. Such treatment would be far too expensive to be feasible anyway.
“A lot of the trees out there are just hanging by a thread,” said Bob Boardwine, ranger for the New Castle District of the Jefferson National Forest.
Rhea traveled from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Health division in Asheville, N.C. to inspect the Roaring Run area for adelgid infestation. He told Boardwine the damage to the trees was shocking.
“I was surprised,” Rhea said. “I didn’t expect to see it that far along in Craig.”
He said the pest was believed to be introduced in Virginia in the 1950’s, when exotic (possibly Asian) tree species were imported to Richmond. The exotic trees were supposedly infested with the adelgid, which have slowly spread throughout the Southern range of hemlock over the past 40 years.
“It is expanding it range each year.”
More trees are actually dying from adelgid infestation in Craig than any other place in the region, according to Rhea. The Forest Service is concentrating its efforts on management driven research, but there is little that can be done now to save infected hemlock trees, which are a unique and vital part of the Forest ecosystem.
Rhea said the hemlock ecosystem occurs in areas surrounding streams. If the hemlocks, which shade the streams and the ground below, are lost to the adelgid, the temperature if the streams could rise and debris could spread to the streams, adversely affecting other plant and animal populations, including fish living I the streams.
“It’s a very important tree to the ecosystems of our forest,” said Rhea.
George Freeland, forest pest coordinator for the JNF, said the adelgid problem in Craig is extreme. The adelgid feeds during all seasons, and is spread by birds, wind, ad mammals. It sucks sap from young twigs, slowing or stopping tree growth, which leads to defoliation and eventually death. The infestation looks like white cottony sacs, and is most detectable in early spring, when the insect also causes the most harm to trees.
“They look like whiteish ghosts,” Freeland said.
Dying trees do not reproduce. The question is not whether the existing hemlocks will survive, he said, but how long they will cling to life.
“Trees are dying,” he said. “The forests are just like people—they get old and pass from the scene.”
-Prepared by Shelly Koon
