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The Asian long-horned beetle is a serious invasive species threat. It has the potential to destroy America's hardwood trees, including maples, ashes, willows and elm trees. (Photo: USDA)
According to The Nature Conservancy, we can all play a huge role in helping detect forest pests and prevent their spread by paying attention to the trees and forests around our homes and nearby natural areas while gardening, hiking and performing our other outdoor activities.
“More often than not, the presence of an invasive insect or disease that has spread to a new area of the country has been detected by a concerned member of the public,” says Faith Campbell, a senior policy representative in the Conservancy’s Forest Health Program. “If we can better educate people about these non-native pests, the chances of controlling them will dramatically increase.”
Imported trees and shrubs, as well as untreated crates and pallets, can have harmful hitchhikers, such as beetles buried in wood or tiny mites on the leaves of a flowering plant. These pests can kill trees in neighborhoods and parks, choke farmland, and devastate forests. Remarkably, new non-native plant pest introductions are detected at a rate of one every 12 days, adding to the burden of the more than 450 damaging tree pests already established in the United States.
“There are many tree species in the forest now that are suffering from attack by pests, including the beech, which produces nuts that feed bears, turkey and many other types of wildlife, and the hemlock, which creates majestic, cathedral-like, old growth forests that many people cherish,” said Gary Lovett, senior scientist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. “The loss of these tree species creates ripple effects that ramify through ecosystems and affect our own lives.”
Here are some of the invasive insects and diseases that are currently threatening trees and other plants that live in forests and other ecosystems across the country. These pests can be contained or mitigated if new outbreaks are detected sufficiently early:
| Non-Native Pest | Threatened regions and trees/plants | |
| Thousand cankers disease | Most of the East, from Pennsylvania south to Alabama and west to Iowa and south to Texas: walnut trees | |
| Sudden oak death | The entire Southeast: rhododendrons, camellias, viburnums, and oak and beech trees | |
| Laurel wilt & ambrosia beetle | Coastal Southeast: redbay trees in coastal regions from North and South Carolina to Mississippi; Florida: avocado groves | |
| Gold-spotted oak borer | Southern California: coast, live & black oaks | |
| Asian longhorned beetle | New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Great Lakes states: many deciduous trees, including maple and birch | |
| Emerald ash borer | New England, Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Plains states: ash trees | |
| South American cactus moth | The entire Southwest from Texas to California: flat-padded prickly pear cacti | |
| Harrisia cactus mealybug | The entire Southwest from Texas to California: saguaro, barrel, and other columnar cacti | |
Become familiar with the insects and diseases that are threats in their region by using the many online resources available, such as www.invasivepests.org or www.forestryimages.org.
The Nature Conservancy recommends that if you notice an insect or tree disease you don’t recognize, take a photo or obtain a specimen of it, and compare it to Web site photos of the suspected pest. Or take the photo or specimen to a county agriculture extension office, local nursery, or a state agricultural office to obtain help with its identification.
If you believe you have found a new outbreak of an invasive pest or pathogen, contact your state department of agriculture to find out where to send a sample of it and how it should be packaged to ensure nothing could potentially escape during shipment. For a listing of all the USDA-APHIS state plant health director offices, visit www.aphis.usda.gov and click on “Report a Pest or Disease” on the far right menu.
The Nature Conservancy and the Continental Dialogue on Non-Native Forest Insects and Diseases has launched an educational campaign to encourage careful planting and to support stronger regulation of plant imports that result in better protection of America’s trees from harmful foreign species. Learn more at: www.plantsmart.org.