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NJDA,
USDA Start Asian Long-Horned Beetle Survey
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Three-Year Effort Begins in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Passaic & Union
Counties |
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The
New Jersey Department of Agriculture has combined
forces with the United States Department of Agriculture,
Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, Plant
Protection & Quarantine (USDA/APHIS/PPQ) to survey
trees in four northeastern counties for signs of
the Asian long-horned beetle (ALB). This year's survey
includes most of Bergen, all of Hudson, northeastern
Union and southeastern Passaic Counties. Sites in
Middlesex, Monmouth and Morris Counties will be added
to the survey next year.
The survey counties fall within a 25-mile
radius of the area in Manhattan already under USDA quarantine for
ALB infestation. The counties have been divided into one-mile-square
areas within which nine sites approximately 1,000 feet apart have
been biometrically (not randomly) selected. During the three-year
effort, when trees are not snow- or leaf-covered and as weather conditions
permit, two-person teams of trained inspectors will visit specific
sites within the survey area. If there is no host tree on the pre-selected
site, inspectors will try to locate the closest host tree. They will
conduct a visual inspection of the tree from the ground for signs
of ALB infestation. To date, the pest has not been found in New
Jersey although it has already caused serious tree loss in New
York State and Chicago, Illinois, where a similar state-federal survey
is already under way. The black-and-white ALB is quite large and
very destructive to hardwood trees, favoring all kinds of maples,
horsechestnuts, poplars, willows, and elms. To lay her eggs, the
female chews small oval or round niches in the outer bark of the
tree. When the immature worm-like beetles hatch, they bore into trunks
and branches and create immense tunnels for themselves inside the
trees. The adult beetles chew their way out, usually in late spring
or early summer, leaving round exit holes about the size of a dime
in their wake. The beetle is native to China and prevalent in Japan
and Korea where no preventative or curative chemical treatment is
used to eliminate the pest. Instead, hardwood growers plant trap
plots of the insect's favorites and harvest and destroy the trap
trees to prevent the beetle from spreading to the cash crop of trees.
The beetle's extremely destructive habits could have potentially
devastating economic consequences for New Jersey's nursery industry
if it were to take hold in the state in addition to the tremendous
losses which could be suffered in residential areas as well as forested
areas of the state where its primary host trees are found. Since
1997, NJDA, USDA/APHIS/PPQ and NJDEP's Bureau of Forestry have done
annual surveys for the pest in the northernmost part of Monmouth
County, the southeastern half of Sussex County, most of Middlesex
County and all of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris, Passaic, Somerset
and Union Counties. These surveys have found no sign of ALB infestation.
For additional information on the pest
or the survey, call Tom Denholm, New Jersey survey coordinator, at
609-292-6590, or visit USDA's website, www.aphis.usda.gov.
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