The Asian Longhorned Beetle in the Northeast

The Asian Longhorned Beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) is an invasive species that has become a serious threat to Northeastern Maple and Buckeye trees. This beetle is already known to be an established enemy in China to mostly poplar trees. America has never had an Asian Longhorned Beetle problem, so why is it an issue now and what can be done to help/prevent future issues?

As its name suggests, this beetle is not native to the Americas - so when and how did it get here in the first place? The USDA believes that the beetle was first discovered in America attacking trees mostly of the maple variety in New York City in 1996. The beetles are highly suspected of arriving from a cargo ship delivering Asian materials (and crates made from the infested Asian poplar trees) for a plumbing project in the city. Since 1996, the ALB has managed to spread throughout New York and into Massachusetts and New Jersey. According to the leading public ALB information website, it will likely soon spread to all states North of New Jersey as well as Delaware, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois simply by transporting larvae-filled firewood and timber to these states.

The destruction that the ALB has caused in a matter of just nine short years is devastating. In a very informative article published by Columbia University, the specifics are outlined - this is definitely NOT a simple problem that can be easily solved, in fact it may be impossible to solve. To give a brief description of the main problems affecting the ability to regulate the ALB, it has no known natural predator at any point in its life cycle and they stay in their larvae state for nearly a year, allowing them to remain virtually invisible for about one year. So it has been able to destroy tens of thousands of trees without anything making a reasonable attempt at stopping it. The only two things that can really be done are to spray trees with pesticides, and/or remove infected trees.

When examining how to create policies concerning the ALB, it would be helpful to examine what others have done when dealing with a similar problem. Being from Colorado I am more familiar with a very similar insect, the Mountain Pine Beetle. After quickly destroying a great portion of the forests in the Colorado and throughout all of the Western United States, people have practically given up the fight against the Mountain Pine Beetle and simply see it as a cycle of natural selection - Aspen trees and other pines not favorited by the MPB will eventually take over most of the affected forest. The only thing that can really kill the MPB is long periods of very cold weather.

When dealing with the Asian Longhorned Beetle, the ability to do anything is even more hindered than with the MPB. The only things that can be done are to keep doing what they have been - basically just regulating the transport of timber and firewood from known affected areas, continually search for newly affected areas, and spray pesticides. However, much can be done to prevent future problems of this nature - an introduction of a foreign, non-native invasive species, disease, or anything else - simply by researching the environmental issues, health issues, etc. of the country/region/city of origin. The simplest example is if the poplar crates and the other materials aboard the cargo ship containing the ALB were thoroughly inspected and researched by an environmental scientist, the Northeast would not even have an ALB problem! If an environmental was able to do a bit of background research before the Asian cargo containing the ALB was unloaded, this issue could have been prevented. Policies need to be implemented that require thorough inspection and information about the origin of packing materials and cargo aboard cargo ships.



Pictures (in order) from:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/Anoplophora%20glabripennis.html

http://www.toronto.ca/parks/images/asian/lifecycle.jpg

http://earthtrends.wri.org/images/pine_beetle_dist.jpg

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mba/lowres/mban401l.jpg