Volunteer program combats hemlock wooly adelgid
Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012Volunteers have proven to be a powerful tool in the battle against the hemlock wooly adelgid in the forest at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park. A new campaign to continue treatments to the trees asks for citizens to adopt a tree and chemically treat it.
Invasive plants could increase with climate change
Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2012Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say climate change will boost U.S. demand for imported drought- and heat-tolerant plants, at the risk of raising imports of more invasive species.
USDA Forest Service unveils invasive species plan
Posted on Friday, December 9, 2011The U.S. Forest Service announced this week the publication of its first ever national-level direction on the management of invasive species across the National Forest System. This policy adds new requirements for agency-wide integration of invasive species prevention, early detection and rapid response, control, restoration, and collaborative activities across NFS lands.
Despite beetles, optimism about Black Hills forests
Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2011An editorial about forests in South Dakota's Black Hills says that despite the mountain pine beetle epidemic, there are several reasons to be optimistic about the ponderosa pine forests, including the benefits of thinning to promote forest health and resistance.
Task force will study dying forests in Eastern Washington
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2011Washington State is convening a committee of foresters, scientists and other experts in an effort to contain a pending forest health epidemic east of the Cascades. Over the next 15 years, state projections indicate that elevated tree mortality could occur across 2.8 million acres of Eastern Washington, or roughly one-third of the landscape. "The combination of the projections and the actual mortality we're seeing causes us alarm," said Aaron Everett, Washington's State Forester. "It's certainly compounded by...what we anticipate will be a warmer climate."
Asian bug with a taste for kudzu -- and soybeans
Posted on Wednesday, November 2, 2011Could Megacopta cribraria -- the kudzu bug -- be the perfect predator for the South's invasive kudzu vine? The bug, which has spread from North Carolina to Alabama, is an invasive species also, unfortunately. Though it has the potential to consume up to a third of the eight million acres of the kudzu that blankets the South over the next decade, the bug is also chewing up soybean stalks.
One million acres of southern forests protected from pine beetle
Posted on Tuesday, November 1, 2011The U.S. Forest Service has protected one million acres of forest through its Southern Pine Beetle Prevention Program. The milestone was reached this fall, on private land in New Kent County, VA. The program spans 13 states and crosses boundaries from privately owned land to state and national forests, aiming to prevent future outbreaks and losses. More than 13,000 individual landowners have participated in the program, together with hundreds of loggers and contractors across the South, to improve the health of southern forests.
Seiridium, fungal killer of cypresses originated in California
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011For the last five years, scientists have been on the trail of a fungus, Seiridium, that has caused a deadly epidemic in the world’s forests. Cypress canker disease has felled up to 95 percent of the cypress trees — a family that includes junipers — growing in some timber plantations and forests across the globe. Last month, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the National Research Council in Italy revealed that their genetic sleuthing had traced the pathogen’s roots back to Monterey cypresses in California.
Southern pine beetle endangers NJ Pine Barrens
Posted on Wednesday, October 26, 2011Southern pine beetles march farther north each year leaving trails of dead pine trees in their wake, and moving deeper into the pitch pine forests of the Jersey Pine Barrens. The invasion could result in considerable damage, changing the ecology of the Pine Barrens.State Forester Lynn Flemming said the beetles destroyed 14,000 acres of pine forest in the state last year.
MORE: The USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station has published a new synthesis of research on the southern pine beetle.
South Dakota warning against 'miracle cures' for pine beetle
Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2011The South Dakota Department of Agriculture is warning Black Hills residents about so-called "miracle cures" that promise to save a tree after it has become infested with mountain pine beetles. State Forester Ray Sowers says an increasing number of methods are being offered, but only effective way to protect a pine tree from the beetles is to spray the trunk of a tree before the tree has been infested.


