MDA and Partners Set Out to Protect Hemlock Trees from Destructive Pest

ANNAPOLIS, MD (May 07, 2012) – Maryland Department of Agriculture’s Forest Pest Management Section, backed up by about 60 volunteers with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Park Service’s Maryland Conservation Corps, will fan out across New Germany State Park in Garrett County this week to protect old growth hemlock trees from the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) – an invasive pest the size of a dot that has been killing hemlock trees across the northeastern United States for years.

“The harsh Western Maryland winters usually kill 40 to 80 percent of these pests; however, the warm winter killed less than 10 percent of them this year,” said Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance. “The HWA does most of its damage in May and June, and again in the Fall. We have been very successful at curtailing its damage and saving our hemlock trees over the past five years. We are going to continue to do all we can to get in their way and protect threatened trees and their associated ecosystems on public lands.”

Between May 7 and May 11, about 3,000 trees are scheduled to be inoculated with pesticides that protect the trees but kill the HWA. These inoculations are done by hand in the stems and soil of the tree.

Last year, MDA in partnership with the DNR Park Service as well as federal partners, inoculated about 3,400 trees in Swallow Falls State Park, also in Garrett County. Swallow Falls has the largest population of hemlock trees in Maryland and is the largest virgin hemlock stand in the state  – over 300 years old.  Another 6,000 at-risk trees in forests across the state were also treated last year. Those trees are healthy and doing well.

The hemlock woolly adelgid is an exotic insect native to Japan and discovered in Virginia in 1951. It has slowly spread along the east coast resulting in hemlock decline and death. The HWA was found in landscaped hemlocks in the Baltimore and metropolitan Washington areas in the 1980s and has spread to natural stands across Central Maryland, finding its way to Garrett County by 2001. As a result, MDA, along with the DNR, developed a Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Management and Suppression Plan to proactively treat thousands of hemlock trees on public lands with soil and tree insecticide injections. The treatments taking place in New Germany State Park this week are a part of that plan.

Additional information about the hemlock woolly adelgid can be found on the following websites:
•    http://www.mda.state.md.us/plants-pests/forest_pest_mgmt/cooperative_forest_health_program/hwa.php
•    http://na.fs.fed.us/fhp/hwa/
•    http://na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/pest_al/hemlock/hwa05.htm
•    http://fhm.fs.fed.us/fhh/fhh_11/MD_FHH_2011.pdf

For more information, contact Bob Tatman, MDA Forest Pest Management Program at (410) 841-5922.
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Note to Editors:  Photos will be available after the treatments are complete.