Cities under seige: as scientists work to eliminate Asian longhorned beetle in New York and Chicago, trees are coming down--and the rest of the country is getting worried.

We call it the Asian longhorned beetle. The Chinese call it the starry sky beetle. Forest entomologists call this inch-and-a-half-long insect with starburst spots on burnished black wings potentially the worst ecological disaster North American forests have ever seen. Because the pest enters the country through heavily populated port cities, urban and suburban forests are at risk, and New York and Chicago are already under assault.

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It has been almost four years since the Asian longhorned beetle was first found in Brooklyn, New York City, and some suburbs; those areas have now lost 4,500 trees. In Chicago and outlying areas more than 1,320 trees have come down. And the beetles have been intercepted in 26 other cities. If they make it beyond those bounds, the result could decimate forests across the continent.

That's because unlike the most recent national pest threat--the gypsy moth--Asian longhorneds don't just weaken trees, they kill them. And the only way to control the pests is to take down infested trees.

AS AMERICAN FORESTS has shown in its regional ecosystem analyses, when cities lose a major portion of their tree canopy, they lose much more than cooling shade and aesthetic delight. Cities would be hard-pressed to provide an equivalent value in stormwater management, air quality, water quality, energy conservation, and wildlife habitat. In stormwater management alone, the nation's urban forests provide estimated services with a value of more than $400 billion each year.

AMERICAN FORESTS is raising money to provide tree-planting grants to organizations in the Chicago area. Individuals and corporations, including specialty retailer Eddie Bauer, are providing donations. To contribute, see "An Asian Longhorned Primer" on page 8.

Those new trees will be sorely needed as neighborhoods there and in New York struggle to overcome the damage the beetle has inflicted.

"When I first laid eyes on this beetle, I had the feeling it could be bad news," says Rick Hoebeke, the Cornell University entomologist who first identified the strange insect. "I checked it against our collection, and ... made plane reservations right away. Two days later I was at ground zero, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I was blown away. It was far worse than I had imagined."

The trunks on the sugar maples Hoebeke examined looked as if they had been used for target practice. A thick blanket of fine sawdust lay beneath each tree. The dime-sized holes were exit points for adult beetles that had probably spent a year or more tunneling through the tree as larvae.

Within two weeks teams headed by the USDA and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets were scouring Greenpoint; more damage was found in Amityville. Before long patterns emerged, with maples and horsechestnuts hard hit and London planes and lindens unaffected.

While the surveys continued in Brooklyn and Amityville, researchers at the USDA's Otis Plant Protection Center on Cape Cod got busy figuring out just how the beetles had arrived. They soon made a connection to China's huge and steadily increasing volume of exports to the United States--now valued at almost $80 billion dollars a year.

When the Chinese began planting vast acres of poplar trees to satisfy a demand for wooden packing crates (as well as fiber, fuel, and windbreaks) its population of starry sky beetles skyrocketed.

"Between 1977 and 1987 the beetle's population increased 500 times," says Vic Mastro, Otis' director. "Then it exploded. By 1991 populations were a whopping 6,500 times--that's roughly 650,000 percent--greater than before.

"We found that the Chinese were scrambling to figure out how deal with this pest, too." Mastro says. "It took us a long time just to figure out how to raise the beetle in the lab so we could experiment with it. In fact, for our first tests we had to use plastic fishing worms--they were about the size of the beetle larvae."

Even as researchers were setting up collaborations with Chinese scientists, trees were coming down in Greenpoint and Amityville. "They had to take huge 60- to 70-year-old trees out through people's living rooms," says Annette Kupiec, cofounder of Neighborhood Roots, a Greenpoint community group that fought for appropriations for replanting. "It was almost unreal."

In July 1998, midway through the New York City region's efforts, the beetle was found in Ravenswood, a Chicago neighborhood. Smaller infestations turned up in the suburbs of Addison and Summit. Just last year the beetle was found in the Cook County Forest Preserve, in Kilbourne Park, and on the Loyola University campus.

In Ravenswood, crews cordoned off the affected areas early in 1999, well before the beetles emerged, and dropped infested trees right in the streets. These trees, many of them Norway maples more than two stories tall, had been planted after Dutch elm disease decimated so many city streets during the 1960s. Once again some blocks were losing almost all of their canopy.

"People in the neighborhood comment on how exposed they feel now," says Joe McCarthy, Chicago's senior city forester. "And for many of the older residents, this was their second witness to cleansing a tree malady--the first being Dutch elm disease. They feel a great sadness and finality ... they will never again see a fully forested block with a canopy of trees like they once had, over 30 years ago."

Crews in Chicago began using bucket trucks and tree climbers to help them find the beetles, a move that almost doubled their count of infested trees. "We'd have missed 360 trees in spring of '99 without them," says McCarthy. "We're much closer to eradication now."

Back in New York City, no one was surprised when the beetle turned up in Lindenhurst or in Bayside, Queens. But inspectors were flabbergasted when Bayside residents attending a public meeting admitted they had been seeing the beetle for a couple years or more.

"A woman even showed us a photo she'd taken of one crossing a sidewalk--back in '92." says Joseph Gittleman, director of the USDA's Asian Longhorned Beetle Program-New York. "It was really disappointing, after everything in the media and all the information we'd put out, that they didn't know, didn't come to us sooner."

If that wasn't enough of a reminder that the beetles could be living anywhere, they were soon found in a Manhattan park just four blocks from the first lady of urban greenspace--Central Park. Of the Park's 22,644 trees, roughly 5,500 are known hosts for Asian longhorneds. Inspection teams coursed through the park, using bucket trucks where binoculars proved inconclusive and climbers--some of them Forest Service smoke jumpers on their off-season--where bucket trucks couldn't go.

"Manhattan was a complete shock," says Fiona Watt, director of central forestry for City of New York Parks and Recreation. "We did the usual whole nine yards, plus we had to get into rooftop gardens on 50-story apartment buildings, too ... Fortunately, Central Park has come up clean. So far."

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So what's next in the war on Asian longhorned beetle? For now cutting trees is the only solution. The beetle's life cycle is long and largely hidden and so far, scientists have found few natural enemies. The beetle is vulnerable to pesticide sprays only during its brief adulthood, and people are leery of using sprays in highly populated cities.

Perhaps the most promising research is with a fungal pathogen that generally kills exposed adults within a couple of weeks.

Eradication has a high price tag--in trees, in dollars, in emotions. But imagine the consequences if we fail. Pests often find new taste sensations in new environments or switch to less favored foods once preferred foods are gone. When an exotic pest such as this one comes into new territory without the predators, parasites, and pathogens that may have kept it in check in its original range, many tree species are potentially at risk. And what about our nation's forests?

"After looking at damage in China and to urban trees here, we can have no doubt about the impact the Asian longhorn beetle could have on natural forests," says Otis Plant Protection Center's Mastro. "It would take out the maples and many other trees. And we've already lost so many species. Not only are the trees in danger, but whole ecosystems, watersheds, wildlife habitat ... it's a phenomenal cost we can barely imagine."

RELATED ARTICLE: AN ASIAN LONGHORNED PRIMER

ADULT BEETLES:

Are 11/2 inches long with antennae as long as 2 inches.

Are glossy black with up to 20 irregular white splotches on their wings.

Have black and white bands on their antennae.

Prefer walking to flying.

DAMAGED TREES HAVE:

Sap flowing down the trunk.

Fine sawdust gathered in branch crotches.

Fallen branches.

Large exit holes in branches (use binoculars).

Numerous dime-sized exit holes on the trunk.

Thick layers of sawdust at their base.

Listless, yellowing leaves during prolonged dry spells.

A loss of foliage.

TO REPORT SIGHTINGS:

In New York

800/554-4501 ext. 72087 or 631-598-5943

Asian Beetle Project, Amityville Village Hall, 2nd flr, 21

Green Ave. Amityville, NY 11701

In Illinois

800/641-3934 or 312/742-3385

Asian Beetle Office, 3920 Rockwell, Chicago, IL 60618

Other States

Call information for your state's capital and ask for either the Department of Agriculture and Markets or the Plant Health Director's Office.

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USEFUL WEBSITES:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/oa/alb/alb.html

http://www.ceris.purdue.edu/napis/pests/alb/

http://willow.ncfes.umn.edu/asianbeetle/beetle.htm

TO CONTRIBUTE TO AMERICAN FORESTS' CHICAGO TREE PLANTING CAMPAIGN:

800/545-TREE or PO Box 2000, Washington, DC 20013. Designate: Chicago. Every $1 plants a tree.

Mary Woodsen, a freelance writer from Willseyville, New York, writes primarily about natural history and environmental issues.