On The Hunt For Signs Of The Asian Longhorned Beetle

Nat1 (chatter)
Inside the basement of a mill building in Manchester, state agriculture officials, foresters, and citizens are forming teams.
Nat2 (who would like to sign up to go to grid area I)
They’ve mapped out parts of Manchester where they believe an Asian Longhorned Beetle would be… if it’s arrived.
The pest can devastate most types of trees except oak…and it has no predator.
Stan Swier, an entomologist with UNH Cooperative Extension, says the beetle has attacked and killed trees in Worcester Massachusetts for the last decade.
278 2:21 “it’s very severe, 25-thousand trees have been cut and chipped already, there’s a 66 square mile quarantine zone, no material can leave that zone without being chipped first.
Swier says if the bug is found here and it’s not controlled- the economic impacts could be huge … threatening both the maple sugar industry, and the timber industry.
The teams’ mission, if accepted, is to find signs of the invasive bug in Manchester.
We hit the streets of Manchester on this Beetle Blitz.
State Forester Kyle Lombard drives.
Two recent college graduates who volunteered for this mission follow behind us.
Lombard says he knows where the Asian Longhorned Beetle likes to hide.
“this pest is a forest pest that also gets into the urban landscape, because its being spread around by commercial industry pallots, crates and packaging material, that’s where it’s going to get started, so that’s where we’re trying to look for it”
We stop on the east side of Manchester, near an old rail line that straddles a neighborhood and an industrial site.
Lombard comes across a Norway Maple.
Kyle2 259 1:01 What’s cool about using maple as the host tree that we’re going to survey for is that when something damages a maple tree it bleeds like crazy.”
Bleeding, as in, the sap oozing out.
When the female beetle lays eggs, she bores an exit hole through the bark.
But Lombard says to the untrained eye, exit holes for this invasive can look similar to all kinds of things – especially in maple trees.
And it can confuse people.
Kyle3 259 2:21 “we get calls constantly that they have round holes, and I say where are they, they’re about three feet off the ground, oh okay, does there happen to be four or five of them all in the same spot, yeah, I’m like hmm, somebody tapped that tree for making syrup, so that’s not one of the unique characteristics for this long horned beetle”
The exit holes can also look like woodpecker holes, or other wood boring beetles.
But there are other signs, like frass, which is the sawdust that the insect leaves once it’s infested a tree.
Each insect has its own kind of frass, the Asian Longhorned leaves long skinny chunks.
And it’s the only insect that will eat the veins, or ribs of the tree leaf.
Shane Lacoss – the college graduate with an entomology degree -came up from Hollis to volunteer for the Beetle Blitz…and maybe boost his career chances.
Shane “IS THIS FUN FOR YOU THEN? Oh yeah yeah, I mean I’m hoping not to find any beetles but, uh, BUT THEN AGAIN IT WOULD KIND OF BE COOL TO SEE ONE? It would be cool to see one yes (laughs) no none in my state, not around here”
He’s writing down any potential signs of the beetle on a clipboard …but after surveying more than a dozen trees, nothing emerges.
State officials are hoping the public will help find the first Asian Longhorned Beetle, before it’s too late.
Another Beetle Blitz hits Portsmouth this weekend.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.