The State of the Trees · Episode 5 of 13 · 22 min
The Newcomers: Invasive Pests Erasing Whole Tree Species
The fastest way to lose a tree species is a pest that arrives in a shipping crate and meets trees with no defense. The episode is a gallery of newcomers: the emerald ash borer, hemlock woolly adelgid, sudden oak death, white pine blister rust, the ghost of the American chestnut and beech leaf disease. It also examines the biosecurity system, which still lets roughly one damaging forest pest establish every two years.
Where it happens
- Detroit, Michigan+7 more episodesWhere the emerald ash borer was first confirmed in 2002
- Richmond, Virginia+4 more episodesNear where the hemlock woolly adelgid was first recorded around 1951
- California coastSudden oak death established in the mid-2000s
- Ohio+1 more episodeWhere beech leaf disease was first observed in 2012
Timeline
- 1869Spongy moth introduced to Massachusetts
- c. 1900White pine blister rust arrives on imported seedlings
- c. 1904Chestnut blight identified in New York
- 2002Emerald ash borer detected near Detroit
- 2012Beech leaf disease first observed in Ohio
- 2021Federal domestic quarantine for emerald ash borer deregulated
Still debated
Sources differ on the emerald ash borer's toll, from 'tens of millions' of trees in federal phrasing to 'hundreds of millions' in Forest Service and university sources, and on how many states it has reached.