Woodlands Committee Meeting Minutes
Attendees: Jerry Uhrig, Phil Notestine, Martha
Dwyer-Bergman, Linda Spencer-Green, Blair Schleicher-
The minutes from the previous
meeting were approved.
Reports
Indicator Species - Spicebush
Jerry
handed out photos of two separate spicebushes in two locations. The first was
located in the fenced-in at the Tourne Wild Flower Trail. This trail has been
fenced for about 7 or 8 years thus offering protection from wildlife. The
second was a spicebush that was in Wilcox near the chimney site/bridge site and
on the side of the trail. It was pointed
out that the protected spicebush has a healthy number of new growths
(shoots/canes) however; the spicebush that is on the trail in Wilcox has no new
growth. It has all been browsed to the ground level. This gives a clear
indication of overbrowsing. There was
another spicebush farther back from the trail that did show some new growth
(shoots/canes). Jerry said that if this were Jockey Hollow, where the deer
situation is more severe, neither spicebush would have any new growth. Jerry
proposed that this might be one type of information we want to include in the
ECO-Hike. It is a simple indicator of deer browse, and spicebush is fairly
common throughout our woodlands.
ECO-Hike Project
Jerry
recently visited the Pocono Environmental Education Center (PEEC) where they
have a number of interpretive trails. They provide individual guide booklets
for each trail. Jerry gave a set of PEEC trail guides to Phil and passed out an
excerpt to everyone. Using the PEEC trails as examples, Jerry compiled some
ideas for stations on the ECO-Hike:
Ideas for ECO-Hike Stations
in Halsey Frederick Park
Phil
suggested that we should do a historical perspective of the land site so that
visitors can more readily appreciate the time required to grow a forest. This would be a good candidate for the first
station on the trail. Phil mentioned that the area that we live in is called
the Newark Bight- it is the geological name of the area. The glaciers once covered this area, and
there is ample evidence of it throughout the town.
It
is likely that we would probably use a numbering system for the stations along
the trail, which can then be correlated with discussion paragraphs in a guide
to be made available on the Borough website. Phil suggested that in addition it
would be helpful to label a few specimen trees and shrubs along the trail for
general information.
It
is expected that this project will involve a consortium of committees:
Environmental (Laurel Durenberger), Trails (Tom Carr), and Woodlands, at a
minimum. Martha suggested that the Senior Citizens might be interested in
participating. Another good local source of ideas and material are the
interpretive stations being developed for the Tourne Wildflower Trail. The
Mountain Lakes ECO-Trail is to be located in Halsey Frederick Park, across from
the high school. The plan is to inaugurate the trail on Earth Day with guided
tours.
Linda
has offered to contact the Seattle Parks Department to get information on how
they do their tours.
Phil
suggested that we all gather together one day for a walk to see what some
interesting stations might be and how we might sequence through them.
Website Threat Priorities
The
Woodlands Committee website is up and running
http://www.mtnlakes.org/Borough/Woodlands/Whome.htm. Basic information about
our work and concerns is available for review by any interested citizen. The
next order of business is to make it more usable and accessible. The first step
in this effort is to provide links to resources from each of the 14 items in
our Woodlands Threat List:
Threat Priorities (revised
November 04)
(Highest
first)
We
need for each item a page of introductory text and links to pertinent
information sites for each item. To get started, we divided up the first eight
items as follows:
Phil
and Martha will do the Deer control/contraception, item 1
Martha
and Linda and Patty will do the Invasive Plants, item 2
Jerry
will do the threats to the trees, items 3-7
Phil
will do the earthworms, item 8
Andy
Bulfer has agreed to support this effort if we can provide him with the
information.
Other Topics and Discussion
Jeana
MacLeod of the Environmental Commission has proposed that Earth Day would also
be a good time to introduce our fenced and protected areas, discussed at the
November meeting, and to explain their purpose.
We
reviewed Martha's photo of the burning bush (winged euonymous) in full autumn
color. Autumn is the best time to fully appreciate how much of this invasive
shrub grows in our woodlands because the leaves turn a vivid flaming red, hence
the common name. This photo would be a good candidate for the Invasives page on
our website.
Blair
reported that she presented our proposal for a permanent committee at the
preceding council meeting. A vote will be taken on it in January.
From the November meeting
"Hemlock Woolly Adelgid: Jerry mentioned that there was a report of some
healthy hemlocks in the
Jerry
and Lynn did investigate. Wawayonda does have some great trails. It is not that
hard to reach and apparently quite popular. Unfortunately, there were no
hemlocks in any better shape that those in the Tourne: not good.
Jerry
reported that the Star-Ledger had an excellent review article on the Asian
Longhorned Beetle problem:
Anatomy
of an alien (insect) invasion
Hungry
stowaways threaten N.J. trees BY
SUE EPSTEIN Star-Ledger
Staff
Ingram
Carner first saw the odd-looking insect in August 1996. The
black beetle with white spots and a long antennae
was crawling out of a hole in a maple tree Carner planted in his Alarmed,
he sketched a picture of the insect and tried to contact bug experts. But
no one wanted to talk to him or come see the bug. "They
thought I was crazy," said Carner, 83. Fast
forward to 2004. Donald
Base was edging grass around the trees in his He
called the state Department of Agriculture, which responded immediately by
setting up a square-mile quarantine. Within days, tree climbers examined
every tree within a mile of Base's property and found 410 infested trees. As
a precaution, they are cutting down 4,000 trees in This
rapid response, and subsequent defoliation and burning, shows how much
scientists and government officials have come to fear the dreaded Asian
longhorned beetle. They
now know the bug kills trees by eating them from the inside out. They now
know the species is invasive and can chew up whole forests of poplar, maple,
willow, plum and pear trees, and can remain in wood long after trees are cut
down. They
now know the beetle, named the Asian longhorn by a Cornell University
scientist, came to the United States as a stowaway in wood pallets from China
and has since been found in New York and New Jersey and around Chicago and
Toronto. They
fear if the Asian longhorned beetle is not stopped, it could eat its way
through the nation's hardwood forests, killing an untold number of trees. "In
North Jersey, 70 percent of all of the trees are maples. If we don't stop
this beetle, they would be dead. That's just New Jersey," said Barry
Emens, director of the New Jersey Asian Longhorn Beetle Eradication Project
for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It'll have a major impact on
the composition of all of our forested areas in the United States as well
where maples are the most common trees." The
beetle is such a threat the federal government has allocated $44.7 million to
eradicate it, including $11.6 million for New Jersey. But
stopping the beetle won't be easy. It
has no natural predators, can not be killed by existing pesticides, and worse
still, it can fly, allowing it to tree-hop distances up to a half-mile. THE
FIRST SIGHTING When
Carner first saw the beetle in 1996, it had been feasting on trees -- and
spreading -- in Brooklyn for at least a year, scientists believe. Carner
contacted the New York Parks Department, the city's environmental department,
the National Arbor Foundation and universities all over the East Coast. He
said he finally got an employee from the parks department to visit the nine
townhouses he built on McGinnis Boulevard in Greenpoint that September, three
months after his discovery. Carner and the employee, Harry Rothar, camped out
and waited and waited with no sign of the bug. Just as Rothar was getting
into his car to leave, a beetle emerged. "He
couldn't believe it," Carner said. "He became all excited." The
parks department contacted Carolyn Kass, an entomologist at Cornell
University, who didn't recognize the bug. She showed it to her colleague, E.
Richard Hoebeke, curator for the Cornell Entomology Collection. Hoebeke
knew the bug wasn't native to North America. He suspected it was Asian and
sent specimens to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and
the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, which has one of the world's largest
collection of Asian beetles. Both museums verified the species was from
China. "No
one here was aware of what was happening in China," said Hoebeke, who
named the bug. "We had no knowledge of this bug, and that was a recipe
for disaster." With
little to guide them, scientists advised government officials to cut down the
infested trees. They also recommended a quarantine around Carner's
neighborhood that prohibited anyone from moving wood, logs, branches or dead
trees outside the zone. But
before officials imposed the quarantine, a tree service had cut down a dead
tree, chopped it up, and took the wood chips to Long Island. Within a short
time, the infestation spread to Amityville and surrounding towns. Scientists
believe the beetles that invaded Brooklyn came from pallets made in China.
The pallets were used to ship Chinese-made sewer pipes to Greenpoint in 1995.
The
pallets were left on the streets by work crews. Once the larvae inside the
pallets matured into adults, they flew out looking for trees. AN
ACCIDENTAL INFESTATION The
Asian longhorned beetle is most commonly found in north central China, Korea,
Japan and Taiwan. The
Chinese government inadvertently helped spread the beetle in the mid-1990s
when it attempted to reforest an area near the Gobi desert with poplar trees,
said Michael Bohne, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service who has
studied the bug in its native habitat. "As
a result, the beetle population exploded," Bohne said. It
got so bad, Bohne said, the government issued an order for citizens to
collect the beetles and paid for each one turned in. "I
remember kids running down the street with Coke bottles filled with beetles.
They manually removed them. But the infestation was so heavy there was
nothing they could do. They had acres of dead and dying trees." The
Chinese government then decided to chop down infested trees. But the wood was
used for pallets and shipped off to the United States, Canada and Europe,
which has also suffered a beetle infestation. In
1998, the U.S. government banned any woodpacking from entering the country --
especially coming from Asia -- unless it was heat treated or treated with
methyl bromide, both methods known to kill eggs and larvae. U.S. inspectors
now routinely travel to China to make sure the wood is being treated. "They
had to provide certifications with the pallets," said Emens, the federal
agriculture department expert. VIGILANCE
IS CRITICAL In
the eight years since the beetle was first spotted, scientists have learned
to be aggressive to stop the bug. It's
not enough to just take down the infested trees, as they first did in
Brooklyn, but any trees that could be host to the beetle within a certain
radius of the infestation. Officials
also can spray noninfested trees outside the radius with Merit, the trade
name for imidacloprid, a pesticide. "Merit
is a preventative treatment, but not a cure-all," Emens said. "When
we take down the trees in the quarantine area, we apply it to the area
outside the quarantine. It's effective in protecting the outside bark. But
once the beetle gets into the heartwood of the tree, nothing we have can kill
it." Even
after trees have been removed, it's no guarantee beetles won't re-emerge. Officials
in New York are still finding infested trees within the 132-square mile
quarantine area, although the number decreases every year. More than 2,500
trees in the city have been destroyed -- including some in Central Park. In
Jersey City, more than 100 trees were found to be infested and more than 400
were cut down in 2003. The bug has not been seen in the city since, but
officials take no chances. Every year until 2008, they will climb all of the
trees within a mile of the original area, just to make sure the beetle is
truly gone. Perhaps
the most important lesson, officials said, is a well-informed public. "It
is residents of these communities that found the infestations, whether it's
in New York, Chicago or New Jersey," Emens said. "Officials can
only respond. Members of the public are the ones who have to be alert and
report anything they see. And they have to know what they are looking for.
That's where we come in." Sue Epstein
covers Middlesex County. She can be reached at (732) 404-8080 or at
sepstein@starledger.com.
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