Benjamin Pierce McNulty (Photo provided)

When my brothers and I come home from college this winter, my family and I will drive up through the crystal lakes, boundless hills and impressive mountains en route to our place in the peaceful village of Saranac Lake. In the heart of our small, forested and hidden patch of paradise stands — magnificently yet unassumingly — a treehouse.

I’ve made some of my favorite memories there, surrounded by brilliant eastern hemlock trees. However, hemlocks are getting wiped out at an alarming rate by an invasive insect that’s getting closer and closer to the place I call my second home. In fact, this October in nearby Warren County, New York, the state began treating eastern hemlock trees infested by hemlock woolly adelgid.

Amidst recent environmental headliners, like the Canadian wildfires that shrouded us all in a yellow haze over the summer, or the fact that this September was the hottest on record, this small bug is no small matter. The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) is an aphid-like insect hardly visible to the naked eye. With no natural predators, it has caused extensive damage to hemlock trees since it snuck into the United States from Japan in the 1950s. This invader clings to the underside of hemlock branches and consumes the tree’s sap. In as fast as four years, hemlock woolly adelgid can completely destroy an adult eastern hemlock.

From a distance, this struggle may seem to be between the rage of a tiny insect and one specific tree. However, the importance of hemlock conservation cannot be underestimated. For hundreds of years, Indigenous people have used the bark of eastern hemlocks in pastes to heal wounds and cure scurvy. Today, hemlock decline can reduce the sales prices of nearby homes by 1-1.6%. Moreover, the eastern hemlock is a keystone species that provides food and habitats for birds, bats, rodents, and more, as well as shelter for various endangered species, including the Blackpoll Warbler and Northern Flying Squirrel.

Unsurprisingly, the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid couldn’t care less about the tree’s significance. But this kind of destructive infestation is nothing new. Another invasive species, the emerald ash borer, has devastated tens of millions of ash trees around the country, putting them on the path to functional extinction, a classification for species that no longer serve an ecological purpose. We cannot let the eastern hemlock meet this same fate.

As this invader continues to plague the American northeast, researchers at Cornell University, among others, are racing against the clock to discover a biocontrol agent–a natural predator that will control the invasive pest populations.

In the meantime, what can you do to help? To get started, all you need to do is download an app: iMapInvasives Mobile. Through this app, you can report hemlock woolly adelgid in your local area, identifiable by the small, white, woolly masses that form as they feed. This “wool” is only visible from November to April, but during their off-season, the adelgid remain on the branches in a dormant state and can be seen through a hand lens as tiny dark specks. Reporting infestation presence and absence on eastern hemlocks is crucial in managing this invasive pest and can’t be done effectively without your help.

As the hemlock woolly adelgid inches closer and closer to the Adirondack Park, I invite you to imagine this gorgeous place without the eastern hemlock–or any other classic tree. What would the park be like without its 6 million acres of forests? Would our memories of the beautiful Adirondacks be locked away in the past?

I’m thinking about what will happen to the three eastern hemlocks that serve as the foundation of my family’s treehouse–will my children ever get to experience this breathtaking place like I have?

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Benjamin McNulty is an undergraduate at Cornell University studying Environment and Sustainability. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, but has spent his summers in Saranac Lake since he was little. He loves his dad, mom, brothers, and two German Shepherds very much.

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Sources

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https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/global-climate-summary-september-2023

https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/lands_forests_pdf/hwafactsheet.pdf

https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/hemlock-woolly-adelgid-frequently-asked-questions

https://www.fao.org/3/XII/0191-A2.htm

https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/ja/2010/ja_2010_holmes_004.pdf

https://archive.rtpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/HWA-Endangered-Species.pdf

https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2020/11/emerald-ash-borer-puts-trees-on-path-to-functional-extinction.html

Our Research

https://www.imapinvasives.org/mobile-tools

https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cornell.edu/dist/f/7151/files/2016/12/Hemlock-and-HWA-Hunters_Field-Protocol-yzf63r.pdf